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Negotiating Water:
Israel and the Palestinians
Institute For Palestine Studies
January, 1996
Contents
-
Natural Water Resources: Characteristics, Control, and Use
- The Water Resources
- Control of Water Resources
- The Israeli-Palestinian Water Gap
-
The Issues
- Equitable Water Rights
- Joint Management
-
Recent Negotiations and Agreements
- The Context of Negotiations
This paper was prepared as part of the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS) Final Status Issues project. The project combines research, documentation, and policy seminars with the aim of raising awareness of and contributing to the peace process on key final status issues. The IPS thanks the Diana Tamari-Sabbagh Foundation and the Ford Foundation for their assistance.
Sharif S. Elmusa is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington, DC, where he has completed a book-length manuscript on water issues in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. He served as the advisor in the "land-and-water group" to the Palestinian delegation at the bilateral talks in Washington, DC. Dr. Elmusa received his Ph.D. in regional development and planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
I would like to thank Joseph W. Dellapenna, professor of law at Villanova University, and Fredric C. Hof, partner at Armitage Associates L.C. in Virginia, for the valuable comments they made on an earlier draft of this monograph. I am also indebted to J.A. Allan, professor of geography at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and Usaid El-Hanbali, senior engineer at the World Bank. They both meticulously reviewed the manuscript of my forthcoming book on the Israeli-Palestinian water conflict, on which the first two parts of this monograph are based.
| Length | |
| kilometer (km) | = 0.62 miles |
| Area | |
| dunum | = 1,000 square meters |
| = 0.10 hectares | |
| = 0.247 acres | |
| square kilometer (sq km) | = 0.386 square miles |
| Volume | |
| cubic meter (cm) | = 1,000 liters |
| = 35.3 cubic feet | |
| = 1.3 cubic yards | |
| = 264.2 gallons | |
| Other volume | |
| 1000 cm | = 0.81 acre-foot |
| acre-foot | = 1,234 cubic meters |
| 100 cm/year (cm/y) | = 274 liters/day |
| = 72.4 gallons/day |
On their road to forging an accommodation, the Israelis and Palestinians have signed three landmark agreements. The Declaration of Principles (DOP), 1 negotiated in Oslo and signed in Washington on 13 September 1993, specified the terms of reference for a resolution of the conflict and arrangements for an interim phase for Palestinian self-government to end no later than September 1998. The Cairo agreement of 4 May 1994 established the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Jericho and parts of Gaza (known as "Gaza-Jericho First"). 2 Finally, the Taba agreement, 3 signed in Washington on 28 September 1995, extended the PA's limited jurisdiction to the population centers of the rest of the West Bank.
Despite these agreements, reconciliation remains a long way off, because the critical issues that drive the conflict have been deferred to the final status talks that were formally inaugurated on 5 May 1996 but were adjourned until after the Israeli elections. These deferred issues include refugees, Jerusalem, Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, boundaries, security, and water.
The three accords contain water-related provisions for the interim period and also spell out principles for resolving the water feud in the final status negotiations. In this monograph, we elucidate the water-related questions that must be settled then (see section 2, "The Issues"). A basic assumption underlying the discussion is that the outcome of the permanent status negotiations would not be "prejudiced or preempted by agreements reached for the interim period," as stipulated in the DOP (Article V.4) and reiterated in the other two accords. Another assumption is that the final boundaries between Israel, on the one hand, and the West Bank and Gaza, on the other, would be those in place on the eve of the 1967 June war.
The key issues at stake in the final status parley on water are the equitable allocation of water rights in the resources common to both sides and the mode of joint management of these resources. The equitable allocation of water rights has been a core Palestinian demand from the inception of the peace talks. With its seizure of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israel took over the management of the Palestinian water sector, changed the pre-existing laws, and imposed iron-clad restrictions over licensing of well-drilling and pumping that checked what had been the substandard water supply essentially at the same level it was in 1967 (see section 1, "Natural Water Resources: Characteristics, Control, and Use"). Both sides have a stake in an agreement on the joint management of the shared resources to ensure that a water-rights allocation regime will be implemented, to protect water resources against depletion and pollution, and to optimize the use of these resources. The two issues have been explicitly placed on the agenda of the final status talks by the DOP and the Taba agreement, and the discussion in this monograph is primarily geared toward them.
Other issues addressed include future water supply to Gaza, which faces a potentially debilitating water shortfall; financial compensation for the Palestinians for past damages; the threat to Palestinian access to water from land alienation by Israel; and the water supply of the Israeli settlements. Also discussed are measures to augment water supply, a matter that could be deliberated, both bilaterally and in the Israeli-Palestinian-American Joint Committee that was formed in 1995 to tackle several tasks, including water production.
However, the monograph does not address several other important issues, including maritime water as it relates to Gaza's coast; the Dead Sea, the northwestern quadrant of which is in the West Bank; and Palestinian claims to what has been dubbed the "Palestinian Golan," presumably 4 the enclaves of those Demilitarized Zones (DMZs) inside the area that had been British Mandate Palestine 5 and that Syria (which had taken the areas during the 1948 war) has also been claiming. 6 Half a dozen Palestinian villages, whose inhabitants were evicted in 1951 by Israeli forces, fell in the DMZ adjacent to the Jordan River and Lake Tiberias. The DMZ also included the mineral hot springs of al-Himma. Although these claims encompass water, an examination of them belongs foremost in the sphere of boundaries.
The victory of the Likud and the right wing in general in the last elections in Israel does not change the nature of these issues. Should the negotiations break down for whatever reason, the Palestinians can be expected to persist in demanding an equitable resolution of the water issues, as they have done for the last twenty-five years before and after the onset of the accommodation process. The purpose of this monograph is not to predict the outcome of the talks, but rather to offer a comprehensive perspective on the issues, including both background and policy suggestions on how the issues might be resolved and on what actions the Palestinians might entertain taking. Thus, the material here is independent of who is in power in Israel or in the Palestinian Authority. The monograph delineates a host of water-related factors that could either constrain the ability of, or provide room for, the two sides to realize their demands (see section 4, "Context of Negotiations"). In this connection, the three water agreements reached thus far are examined not so much for their relevance to the interim period but for the lessons they render for the permanent status (see section 3, "Recent Negotiationsand Agreements").
To understand the issues, agreements, and context of the negotiations, we provide at the outset (section 1) a descriptive outline of the water resources: their hydrogeographic features, the shift of control over them over time, their historic and current exploitation by the two sides, and the "water gap" between Israelis and Palestinians. These resources fall into two categories: those common to the Palestinians and Israelis (predominantly groundwater) and those common not only to the two sides but also to Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria--namely the Jordan basin. In sections 1 and 2, particularly in relation to the questions of water rights and joint management, the two categories of water resource are handled separately, because each has its own hydrological, historical, and legal idiosyncracies.
The discussion regarding the two core issues, water rights and joint management, centers on doctrines and principles of international water law and how they apply in the Palestinian-Israeli context. In particular, the doctrine of "equitable utilization" is singled out as a basis for the allocation of water rights because it is widely accepted by the international community. Furthermore, the principles of mutuality, equality, and respect for sovereignty, which international law stresses must be observed in joint management arrangements, are discussed with reference to special tasks, verification of conformity of water extraction to water allocation, water protection, and dispute resolution.
These topics are broader and more complex than can be handled by a single monograph or author. The Palestinians do not give the impression of having fully digested them or of having developed the vision, strategy, or options for the final round of the negotiations. I hope that this modest effort serves as a reminder of the kind of preparations that are required.
A caveat is in order regarding the facts and figures throughout the text. The data situation can be described as a "broken record" in a double sense: not only is the published record seriously incomplete, but its inadequacy has been noted repeatedly since the start of the talks. It is widely acknowledged that Israel, which for the last twenty-nine years had a monopoly over the data relating to virtually all the resources pertinent to this monograph, has treated them as a state secret, selectively releasing information that often lacked the support of "raw" data or technical reasoning. So the data must be taken as tentative.
Two examples illustrate the reason for skepticism, even if it is not borne out. Before the establishment of the State of Israel, the engineers working for the World Zionist Organization (such as W.G. Lowdermilk) substantially overestimated the water available in Palestine (despite contrary evidence by a British engineer, M.G. Ionides) in an effort to persuade Britain to raise the ceiling on Jewish immigration allowed into the country. 7 More recently, Israeli estimates have been very contradictory. For example, Tahal, Israel's water planning company, consistently put the potential of the eastern groundwater basin of the West Bank at 100 million cubic meters per year (mcm/y) or less, 8 whereas this potential is listed in the Taba agreement at 172 mcm/y (Annex III, Article 40. Schedule 10). The large discrepancy in the numbers gives cause for skepticism concerning Israeli-furnished data until they are mutually verified.
Finally, the basic premise of this monograph is that, in addition to its compelling ethical and legal justifications, a fair resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an indispensable pillar for a sustainable peace. Thus, the goal here is not simply to search for a "middle" ground but for an equitable one that is also anchored in mutuality. We explore realistic propositions that are based on an appraisal of the "facts" and requirements and capabilities of both sides, as well as the urgent need to protect the quality of the limited water resources
1. Natural Water Resources: Characteristics, Control, and Use
Between 1922 and 1948, the entities now termed the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel constituted a single political unit placed by the League of Nations under British Mandate. The total area of Mandate Palestine was 27,024 square kms: 26,320 sq kms of landmass and 704 sq kms of inland water. The West Bank's landmass area is 5,545 sq kms and Gaza's 365 sq kms, or a combined total of 5,910 sq kms, about 23 percent of Mandate Palestine's landmass area. Israel's landmass area is 20,255 sq kms. 9
The water resources of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza are highly interconnected and as such qualify as common international resources. 10 They are summarized in table 1.
Before describing these resources in more detail, several clarifications of the quantities in the table are in order. The figures are averages; actual levels drop appreciably in times of drought. Most of the water is fresh, a small amount is brackish, and a similar quantity is saline. The Jordan basin (or "watershed" in American terminology) is an international water resource common to Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank.
The chief Palestinian and Israeli water resources are aquifers, or underground geological strata that yield significant amounts of water to wells and springs. The rock formations of Mandate Palestine are highly absorbent, thus allowing most of the water that does not evaporate or transpire to percolate underground. There is little runoff or floodwater, and surface water in the country is mainly that of the Jordan River basin.
Groundwater
The principal groundwater 11 basin is the mountain aquifer, itself comprised of three smaller aquifers, eastern, northeastern, and western, according to the direction of the flow (see map 1). The water of the western aquifer, the most bountiful of the three, flows toward the Mediterranean, and its natural drains are two main groups of springs: Ras al-Ayan (Rosh Ha'ayen), which feeds the al-Auja (Yarqun) river that empties into the Mediterranean, and al-Timsah (Tanninim). This aquifer may also have a direct outlet to the Mediterranean not far from al-Timsah springs. Its replenishment area is 1,600-1,800 sq kms. The northeastern aquifer flows toward the Baysan (Bet She'an) and Jerzeel plains. Its natural drains are springs in the West Bank and Israel, and it has a replenishment area of 500-590 sq kms.
Both the northeastern and western aquifers are recharged from the West Bank and are tapped from within Israel and the West Bank. However, Israel "replaced" the springs draining both aquifers on its side of the border by hundreds of wells.
The eastern aquifer flows toward the Jordan River and is replenished from the West Bank. It is drained naturally by several groups of springs in the West Bank. A small fraction of its water discharges into the Jordan River and the Dead Sea, and a negligible amount leaks into Israel. The aquifer's replenishment area amounts to 2,000-2,200 sq kms.
The second major renewable groundwater resource in Mandate Palestine is the coastal aquifer, which underlies the coastal plain in both Gaza and Israel. The literature generally refers to the segment in Gaza as the Gaza aquifer and in Israel as the coastal aquifer. It is tapped from within both Gaza and Israel, and its recharge area is 1,800 sq kms.
The rest of the renewable aquifers are replenished and can be tapped only from Israel. They drain into both the Jordan basin and the Mediterranean Sea.
In addition to the renewable aquifers, a tremendous nonrenewable (fossil) aquifer underlies the Negev desert, in Israel. The aquifer may contain a total of 70 billion cubic meters (bcm), occurring at depths of 800 meters or more. Its water is brackish but suitable for irrigation, and some Israeli scientists and economists have advocated its gradual mining for the benefit of the Negev desert (which currently imports its water from the Jordan basin in the north) and even of the coastal plain. 12
Floodwater and the Jordan Basin
Surface water is provided by two sources: the Jordan River (the chief source) and runoff water inside the country.
Runoff water gathers in numerous streams, the vast majority of which originate at the watershed of the central mountains of the West Bank. Those that issue from the West Bank come in two groups: One flows east toward the Jordan River and the other west toward the Mediterranean. The western wadis can be tapped from the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel, whereas the eastern ones can be tapped from Israel and the West Bank. In reality, only the water of the western wadis is impounded (by Israel).
Another stream that merits mention because it has been singled out as an object of dispute between the Palestinians and Israelis is wadi Gaza (Bessor). The wadi commences in Israel and empties into the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast. It has an estimated average flow of 14 mcm/y. 13
The total volume of floodwater, 90 mcm/y (see table 1), is the mean annual exploitable volume; it is not the total runoff, which is estimated at 140 mcm/y. How much of this runoff can be tapped from Israel and how much from the West Bank and Gaza is unclear, especially because the volume of floodwater in the West Bank has been poorly monitored in the past. Harnessing floodwater is costly because of its distribution among many streams and because its volume varies considerably from year to year.
The Jordan River originates at the slopes of Mount Hermon, located equally in Syria and Lebanon, and empties into the Dead Sea (see map 2).
14
Mount Hermon provides the bulk of the water to the three tributaries--Banyas, Dan, and al-Hasibani rivers--that constitute the Jordan River's headwaters. It is after the "point" of confluence of these three tributaries that the name "Jordan River" is applied to the waterway, which then descends southward in the Jordan Rift through Lake al-Hula and its contiguous marshlands. The marshlands and Lake al-Hula were both drained by Israel between 1951 and 1958, despite Syria's contention that part of the drainage works (irrigation canals) fell in the DMZ between the two sides.
15
After the river passes al-Hula plain, it tumbles into a deep gorge then enters Lake Tiberias (Kinneret)--the biblical Sea of Galilee. From its origin to its entry into this lake, the Jordan River is sometimes called the "upper Jordan." Lake Tiberias is the river's largest freshwater reservoir, with a volume of 40,000 cubic kms. It also drains areas in the Golan Heights in the east and the Galilee mountains in the west, in addition to saline springs issuing on its shore and at its bottom. A short distance from its debouch-ure at Lake Tiberias, the Jordan River receives its largest single feeder, the Yarmuk River, which drains large areas in Syria's Huran plain and the Golan Heights as well as areas in Jordan's northeast. Between its meeting with the Yarmuk River and its discharge into the Dead Sea, the Jordan River is fed by numerous small streams and minor rivers from Jordan in the east and Israel and the West Bank from the west. The stretch between Lake Tiberias and the Dead Sea is sometimes dubbed the "lower Jordan." The Dead Sea itself is an inland lake at the end of the river that drains an area of 40,000-47,000 sq kms. It is replenished by the Jordan River, the main feeder; floodwater; saline, mineral springs from Jordan in the east and from Israel and the West Bank in the west; springs at its bottom; and rainfall.
Overall, the Jordan River system drains an area of 17,600-19,800 sq kms and carries a flow of about 1,500 mcm/y, with wide interannual variations. Syria is by far the largest contributor of drainage area and of water flow to the system, followed by Jordan and Lebanon; Israel and the West Bank are minor contributors (see figure 1). 16
From the point of view of water exploitation, the Jordan basin has some favorable characteristics. More than one-half of the discharge of its major tributaries is baseflow (or spring flow), which reduces its susceptibility to rain fluctuations. Furthermore, the Jordan Rift slopes steeply from north to south, making possible the use of gravity in the transportation of water within the Rift. The steep gradients also create conditions suitable for hydroelectric power generation. Although the small volume of water severely limits the amount of electricity that can be tapped from the river system, especially when compared to today's consumption, the Jordan Rift and the Dead Sea have inspired schemes to generate significant amounts of hydropower by channeling water from the Mediterranean or Red Seas and harnessing the elevation difference.
Conversely, the low elevation of the Jordan Rift makes transporting water to higher elevations energy intensive, hence costly. Also, the extreme temperatures of the summer months cause significant water loss by evaporation, notably in Lake Tiberias, Lake al-Hula, and the contiguous marshlands, before they were drained.
In sum, groundwater is the primary water resource in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel. Furthermore, these renewable water resources of the three entities are essentially all interlinked and thus constitute common international resources. The mountain aquifer, which is the hub of the groundwater system, is connected to the coastal aquifer in the west and to the Jordan River through its northeastern and eastern basins. Likewise, the streams that issue from the central West Bank mountains flow toward both the river and the sea. This is also essentially true of the rest of the renewable water sources. In the Jordan basin, the largest source of surface water, hydrologic interdependence involves not just the Palestinians and Israel, but also Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. In fact, the West Bank and Israel contribute a minor amount of the basin's flow, Syria being by far the biggest contributor.
This hydrologic interdependence has fueled the water feud between the Israelis and the Palestinians as well as the wider one in the Jordan basin. It renders cooperative agreements among all the riparians a necessary ingredient for creating a stable water supply, if not also a stable political, regime.
Although the conflict among Israelis and Palestinians and other Arabs has centered on land, water also has been a primary object of contention. As the Zionist movement and later Israel progressively took over Palestinian and Arab territories, they also acquired the associated water resources. From the start, leaders and strategists of the Zionist movement saw water as key to large-scale irrigation, itself a prerequisite for the "absorption" of large numbers of immigrants and as a resource for hydropower generation in a country that lacked coal. 17 There can be no doubt that large-scale Jewish immigration has been the basic cause of today's imbalance between the population size and limited water resources in Mandate Palestine and in the Jordan basin as well.
Control of the Jordan Basin
The water of the Jordan basin entered into the equation of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the process of splitting up the territory of the Fertile Crescent between Britain and France after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Zionist leaders then lobbied the two European powers to incorporate within what was to become Mandate Palestine 18 the headwaters of the Jordan River as well as segments of the Yarmuk River and the Litani River (in today's Lebanon), after it bends west toward the Mediterranean. After prolonged negotiations, Britain and France in 1923 drew the boundaries of their mandated territories such that Palestine bounded some of these water sources, such as the al-Hula and Tiberias Lakes and the Dan River. 19 Despite Zionist proposals, Palestine's boundaries excluded the Litani River and important segments of the Banyas, al-Hasibani, and the Yarmuk Rivers.
Britain and France sought at the time to divide and regulate the use of the Jordan basin's water, which suddenly became a shared resource among Palestine, Syria (which then still included Lebanon), and Transjordan (as present-day Jordan was known until 1950). The most significant water-related agreement between the two powers was the 1920 Anglo-French Convention, which accorded priority of access to the waters of the upper Jordan and Yarmuk Rivers to Syria. 20 According to the convention, Palestine was to use the residual or "surplus" water. Another noteworthy development during those years was the granting by Britain in 1926 of a seventy-year concession to Pinhas Rutenberg, a Zionist engineer and activist, for electric hydropower generation on the Jordan River. (Britain had earlier rejected a similar request by an Arab entrepreneur.) Rutenberg, who had earlier created the Palestine Electric Corporation, Ltd., built a power plant just south of the point of confluence of the Yarmuk and the Jordan Rivers, which was destroyed by Jewish forces during the 1948 war when the Arabs took the station. The terms of the concession allowed Transjordan to develop the Yarmuk water in excess of the station's requirements. In actuality, however, the corporation always claimed that there was no excess water. 21
As a result of the 1948 war, Israel was created out of most of Mandate Palestine, Gaza was administered by Egypt, and the West Bank became part of Jordan. The conflict over the Jordan basin intensified in the immediate years after the establishment of Israel. 22 In 1953, the United States dispatched a special ambassador, Eric Johnston, to mediate the conflict. Another aim of the mediation effort was the resettlement of those among the Palestinian refugees who in 1948 flocked to the Jordan Valley. Resettlement was to be induced through giving the refugees land and irrigation water. After two years of shuttle diplomacy, several studies by American engineering firms, and plans and counterplans by the Arabs and Israelis, Johnston formulated what has become known as the Johnston plan. The Johnston plan was a modified version of a plan proposed by the American engineering firm, Charles T. Main, and known in the literature as the "Unified plan." The Johnston plan maintained the Anglo-French Convention's assignment of priority of water use to Syria, extending it to Jordan as well. However, it went beyond the Convention and allotted fixed water quotas from specific segments of the Jordan River system to each of the riparians of the basin. The plan, which was not ratified by the riparians, can be said, for reasons to be identified subsequently, to have served as a customary law at least between Jordan and Israel.
In 1959, Israel made known its plans for the "National Water Carrier," which entailed diverting water from the northwestern corner of Lake Tiberias through a system of canals, tunnels, and pipes to the coastal plain and the Negev desert, the two areas where most of the irrigable land in Israel is located. The Arab states objected to the diversion scheme for many reasons, including that customary law did not allow out-of-basin transfer before the satisfaction of needs within the basin itself. To stop Israel from implementing its project, they attempted in 1964, after much hesitation and bickering, to divert the waters of the al-Hasibani and Banyas Rivers. Clashes ensued, and Israel shelled the construction sites, aborting the diversion attempt. At the same time, Israel was able in that same year to inaugurate its water carrier and begin drawing water from the basin.
In the 1967 June war, Israel seized the Golan Heights and brought under its dominion all the headwaters of the Jordan River system and a larger stretch of the Yarmuk River than before the war. Its occupation of the West Bank in effect afforded it hegemony over the lower Jordan as well. Furthermore, when it invaded Lebanon and retained the "security zone" in the south, it completed its hold over the upper and lower Jordan River as well as the lower reach of the Litani River. Israel has since been taking advantage of its new hydrostrategic position and acted as if it was an absolute sovereign in the basin. It has drawn as much water from the Jordan basin as has essentially been possible within the hydrologic constraints (see section 1, "The Consumption Gap").
The only exceptions to this hegemony have been the upper and middle reaches of the Yarmuk River in Syria and Jordan and the feeders of the lower Jordan River from Jordanian territory. Much of the Yarmuk River's water originates from Syria, which has exercised a measure of autonomy concerning the use of its water. Jordan, a midstream but less powerful riparian than either Israel or Syria, has had little influence in the Yarmuk basin.
Control of Groundwater
In contrast with the situation in the Jordan basin, the Palestinians and Israelis are the only parties to the feud over the water resources in Mandate Palestine proper. Under the British Mandate, both sides pumped or diverted (from springs) groundwater, using most of it for irrigation. By the mid-1940s, the irrigated land in the country was roughly 500,000 dunums, about half of it planted with citrus. 23 The areas planted with citrus by both sides were nearly equal, but the Palestinian vegetable area was nearly three times larger than that of the Jewish area, which suggests greater use of irrigation water by the Palestinians than by the Jews. This conclusion is at variance with the picture in most Israeli literature on water, which leaves the impression that only the Jews had exploited the water resources of Palestine. 24
As a consequence of the establishment of Israel, the Palestinians lost access to many of the groundwater resources they had previously exploited, notably the coastal aquifer, but continued to develop the sources on their side of the armistice lines in the West Bank and Gaza. The Israelis maintained access to all the sources to which they had previously had access and exploited them to the fullest. The Palestinians, on the other hand, still reeling from the 1948 al-nakba (disaster), could not drill as many wells or draw as much water from the mountain aquifer. It is unclear how Israel would have responded had they tried to extract greater quantities of water from the mountain aquifer than they actually did, but the stringent controls it imposed after 1967 on Palestinian water use may be telling.
Inside Israel itself, the Palestinians who stayed and became Israeli citizens also lost control over their water sources. Under Israeli water law, water is a state property, and ownership of land does not include ownership of water sources underlying or passing through owned lands. Water rights of individuals and communities are defined in terms of quantities without specification as to source. Israeli law contrasts with the pre-existing Ottoman and British laws in Mandate Palestine. Whereas the Israeli law may not have been specifically designed to compromise the Palestinian-Israelis' water resources, it did so in practice. Their water allotment became the responsibility of Mekorot, the Israeli semi-state-owned water company. Mekorot's control of water supply, together with a complex institutional apparatus inside Israel generally favoring Jewish citizens, resulted in water allocations discriminatory against Palestinian Israelis. The discriminatory water allotment contributed to the stagnation of their agriculture, which in turn resulted in the eventual sale of land by many Palestinian Israeli landowners to Jewish land-purchasing institutions. 25
Israel's seizure of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 brought under its control all the water resources west of the Jordan River, including sources to which the Jews had not previously had access, such as the eastern basin of the mountain aquifer. As it did in the upper Jordan basin, Israel acted as if it was an absolute sovereign over the water resources of the West Bank and Gaza. It enacted a series of Military Orders (the main form of legislation in the two Palestinian regions), arrogating to itself the power to license well digging and to fix pumping quotas. It also "leased" for forty-nine years--the period of state-land lease in Israel--the management of the water sector in the West Bank and Gaza to its water company, Mekorot. In the meantime, the Palestinian water management bodies in existence before 1967 were marginalized and relegated to administrative functions. Policy and technical matters were all put in the hands of the Israeli state's representatives. Consequently, the development of Palestinian institutional water capabilities was retarded. 26
Water extraction and use is characterized by a wide gap between Israelis and Palestinians. The gap is manifested in the diversity of the water sources that the two sides have access to, quantity and quality of the water they use, level of service, pricing, and irrigated agriculture.
The Extraction Gap
Israel and Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza extract water from all the sources listed in table 1. Moreover, Israel has an extensive, integrated network of water conduits, centered on its water carrier, which affords it flexibility in managing the water resources, notably in times of drought and in mixing water of different qualities. In contrast, the Palestinians are limited to the mountain aquifer and the portion of the coastal aquifer underlying Gaza, and their water distribution system is highly decentralized. These conditions rigidify the management system and render the supply more vulnerable than in Israel.
Overall, Israel takes 85-90 percent of the groundwater of Mandate Palestine, 27 and it alone impounds surface water, notably from the Jordan basin. From the mountain aquifer, Israel takes 483 mcm/y (including 40 mcm/y for the settlers in the Jordan Valley), compared with 118 mcm/y for the Palestinians, or four times as much. 28 The Palestinians have charged that Israel intercepts an unspecified flow that leaks into Gaza from the coastal aquifer inside its borders; Israel has denied the charges. Independent verification has not been possible because what are thought to be the intercepting wells are located in a military zone.
As for surface water, Israel impounds water from the western wadis that commence in the West Bank watershed, whereas the Palestinians get almost nothing from them. In addition, by 1993, Israel was thought to have impounded an average of 1 mcm/y from wadi Gaza and was planning to impound a total of 9 mcm/y. 29 Palestinian specialists have contended that Israel takes away even larger quantities. However, they probably would be unable to specify those quantities accurately, because only the tail end of the wadi traverses Gaza.
Israel also draws large quantities from the Jordan basin, whereas the Palestinians are denied access to it. To put the situation in the basin in perspective, reference can be made to the water quotas allotted by the Johnston plan and to the water agreement between Israel and Jordan included in the peace treaty signed on 26 October 1994. The total amount of water allotted by the plan to all the riparians was 1,287 mcm/y for irrigation in the basin. The share of each riparian and the source of diversion are listed in table 2. The quotas are straightforward; the West Bank was accorded a share subsumed under that of Jordan, of which it was then a part. The West Bank's share of 215 mcm/y was slated for diversion through a gravity canal, the West Ghor Canal (ghor means "depression" in Arabic), across the western Jordan Valley (see map 3). The rest of Jordan's share, 505 mcm/y, was to be channeled through a twin canal, the East Ghor Canal, and impounded behind dams on the side wadis. (See Appendix 1 for how the West Bank's share is estimated.)
Israel extracts water from the basin through its water carrier, at al-Hula plain and from the Yarmuk River. It is thought to have adhered to its quota under the Johnston plan until 1967, when it expanded its zone of control in the basin and began unilaterally to exceed the quota. Israel extracts about one-half of the total allocated flow, compared to its quota under the plan of 31 percent that was mainly a nonguaranteed residual.
30
Israel's 1994 water agreement with Jordan required it immediately to reduce its intake from the Yarmuk and the lower Jordan Rivers by about 45 mcm/y. However, the agreement also envisioned joint projects to impound floodwater from the two rivers that, if implemented, would make up for, if not exceed, this quantity.
31
The Arab riparians were slow in the early years to capture their water quotas under the plan, mainly because of the lack of financial resources and, especially in the case of Syria, the continued tensions along its borders with Israel. With the aid of the United States, Jordan was able to tap only a portion of its allocations beginning in the early 1960s. It did that by diverting water from the Yarmuk River (110-130 mcm/y) into the East Ghor Canal (later renamed the King Abdallah Canal).
32
This brings Jordan's diversion to 250 mcm/y, or about one-half of its share.
33
Jordan also made several attempts to augment its water production by building jointly with Syria the al-Maqarin dam on the Yarmuk River. The two countries agreed to the project in 1953, and it was an element in the Johnston plan as well. When Jordan first tried to erect the dam in the 1980s on its own, Syria objected. Then the two sides reached an agreement in 1987 to build an alternative dam, which they dubbed al-Wihda (or Unity), close to the original site. At that point, Israel vetoed the project, and the dam was never built. The water agreement that Jordan signed with Israel (if all the quantities it earmarked for Jordan as estimated by its own experts materialize) could bring that country's water withdrawal from the basin close to its quota under the Johnston plan.
34
Jordan also failed to build the West Ghor Canal in the West Bank before 1967. After Israel seized the territory in 1967, it declared the land strip alongside the river a closed military area and barred Palestinians from entering it. The closure deprived Palestinian farmers not only of the benefits of the canal but also of the small amount of water they used to pump directly from the river to irrigate fields on the riverbank before the 1967 June war.
Syria did not initially undertake projects to divert water from the basin. When it lost its access to the upper Jordan River in 1967, it concentrated on the Yarmuk River. It built a series of small dams on the numerous streams that fed the river from within its borders. These dams reportedly enabled Syria to impound 170 mcm/y and perhaps more. This is a greater quantity than Syria's quota under the Johnston plan, but it does not match Israel's excess.
Lebanon, too, did not divert its share from the basin before 1967 and was unable to do so afterward, because of internal disorder and Israel's occupation of the headwaters.
Thus, Israel translated its successive hydrostrategic gains into significant increases in water exploitation, to the point that it now takes 85-90 percent of the groundwater of Mandate Palestine and perhaps more than 60 percent of its quota under the Johnston plan from the Jordan basin. At the same time, it meticulously curtailed Palestinian access to the mountain aquifer and the Jordan River through direct, unilateral management of the Palestinian water sector. Consequently, the Palestinians today tap a small percentage of the groundwater resources and no water at all from the Jordan River.
The Consumption Gap
Societies harness water for many purposes: household (drinking, cleaning, gardening); municipal (parks, commercial); crop irrigation; and industrial. In the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel, the bulk of water is used for crop irrigation. Households constitute the second-largest category of water consumers, followed by industry. Whereas water use patterns of Israelis and Palestinians are similar, a wide gap separates the two sides in the levels of consumption and the quality of service. To better appreciate the significance of the gap, a brief mention of the relative economic standing of the Palestinians and Israelis is in order. In particular, agriculture-related comparisons are accented because of the primacy of this sector as a water user.
The Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza in 1992 was estimated at 2 million: 1.2 million in the West Bank and 0.8 million in Gaza (see tables 3 and 4).
35
If the figures are accurate, the per-capita GNP in 1992 would amount to $1,720 and the GDP to $1,325. The sizable difference between the two indicators largely mirrors the reliance of Palestinian labor on employment outside the West Bank and Gaza, notably in Israel. The largest sector of the Palestinian domestic economy is agriculture. In the early 1990s, agriculture contributed one-third of the GDP and absorbed a similar share of employment. The industrial sector, largely household workshops and small plants, is still in its infancy. The irrigated area in the West Bank fluctuates around 90,000 dunums. Irrigated agriculture is practiced primarily in the Jordan Valley and the semicoastal zones around the towns of Janin and Tulkarm in the north and northwest. In Gaza, the irrigated area is 90,000 dunums, about one-fourth of Gaza's total area; it is likely to decline in the future because of the ever-mounting population pressure and urbanization.
In 1992, Israel's population exceeded 5 million. The size of its economy in the same year, as measured by GDP, was twenty-four times larger than the Palestinian economy. Its GNP per capita was seven times larger. Structurally, the Israeli economy is far more sophisticated than its Palestinian counterpart, and its industry contributed about one-fifth of the GDP in the early 1990s. By comparison, agriculture plays a minor role in the Israeli economy; its share was less than 3 percent of the GDP and represented a slightly larger proportion of employment.
Irrigated land in Israel peaked in the late 1980s at more than 2.3 million dunums, necessitating overexploitation of the groundwater. It has declined since to 1,864,000 dunums in 1993. The main areas of irrigated agriculture are the northern Negev desert, middle and southern maritime plain, Jordan Valley, and interior plains.
Since 1967, the West Bank and Gaza economies have become exceptionally dependent on Israel, notably in trade and labor. To illustrate, in 1992, the Palestinians imported from Israel 90 percent of their overall commodity imports and 80 percent of those of nonprocessed foods 36 (see table 4). They sold Israel more than 40 percent of their commodity exports and 55 percent of their nonprocessed food exports. Palestinian trade thus exhibits a remarkable concentration of trade "partnership" with Israel; the same cannot be said of Israel's.
Irrigation Water Gap.
The amount of water a person requires annually for food production in a semiarid environment is roughly 1,000 cubic meters (cm), with variations according to land productivity. The level of irrigation-water supply of both sides falls markedly short of the food self-sufficiency requirement (see table 5). Nonetheless, the Palestinian supply is meager; measured per person, it is only one-third of Israel's. Largely because of the disparity in water supply, the Palestinian agricultural commodity import bill per person is four times as high as that of the much richer Israel.
37
The gap in the irrigation water supply is reflected in the area of land irrigated. The Palestinian irrigated area per person is about one-fourth that of Israel (table 5). Moreover, Israel has been able to irrigate more than 90 percent of its irrigable land, compared to the West Bank's one-third.
Above and beyond the irrigated area within its own borders, Israel has allowed the settlers in the West Bank and Gaza to irrigate tens of thousands of dunums of confiscated Palestinian land. This land is located in the Jordan Valley, where the Palestinians have been denied access. It consumes most of the 40 mcm/y or so that the settlements take from the eastern aquifer. 38
Irrigation water supply in the West Bank has not changed since Israel seized the area in 1967. The small increase of overall water supply, 20 mcm, was earmarked for the household sector. Moreover, in Gaza, water supply would have been naturally circumscribed, but in the West Bank the supply was suppressed by quotas and the iron-clad curbs on licensing. At the same time, Israel raised its total water production by 345 mcm between 1970 and 1993. The inability of Palestinians to expand their irrigation water supply stymied the horizontal expansion of their agriculture: the area of irrigated land remained constant since the late 1960s. Yet the West Bank has readily reclaimable land double the size of the area presently irrigated. In fact, on the eve of Israeli occupation, the Jordanian government had drawn a five-year plan for a 40 percent expansion of the irrigated area in the West Bank. The irrigated land in the West Bank stayed the same, but Israel expanded its irrigated area by 340,000 dunums in two decades (1970-90).
The irrigation water disparity is also evident in the types of crops grown by the two sides and their agricultural trade. The Palestinians irrigate virtually no crops other than vegetables and fruits, whereas the Israelis irrigate large areas of field crops, such as wheat and cotton, in addition to horticultural crops. In economic terms, the marginal value product of the water used to grow Palestinian crops (except for certain citrus areas in Gaza) exceeds the marginal cost of water. Israel's field crops, in comparison, are economically inferior and can be cultivated mainly because of the generous subsidies of water and other inputs to Israeli farmers. Cotton, in particular, planted in the hot Negev desert and the southern coastal plain, is a water guzzler. Thus, growing cotton is neither economically nor ecologically sound. Nevertheless, the irrigated cotton area, even after a period of shrinkage, stood at 165,000 dunums in 1993. 39 If the water Israel allots for cotton were made available to the Palestinians, the irrigated area in the West Bank could easily triple. It is proper to conclude therefore that although subsidies may be an Israeli internal affair, they do aid and abet the water deprivation of the Palestinians.
Furthermore, Israel uses substantial amounts of water for export crops: citrus fruits, vegetables, flowers, and cotton. Although the amounts have declined over time because of population growth, they are projected to make up one-third of the irrigation water budget in 1997. The Palestinians also export some crops, but the value of their exports is minuscule, amounting in 1992, for example, to only 6 percent of Israel's agricultural exports. Finally, the disparity in water supply is translated into a significant Palestinian agricultural trade deficit with Israel.
It is noteworthy that Israeli consumers would pay less if Palestinians were to use the water to grow produce and sell it to Israel, because Palestinian wages are much lower than their Israeli counterparts, and the Israeli consumer would not have to pay agricultural subsidies. Indeed, letting the Palestinians grow the produce would not be exceptional; it would merely enable them to join the ranks of Third World countries that export primary products to the metropolis.
Household and Industrial Use Gap.
Palestinian and Israeli use of household water is also marked by a conspicuous disparity. Palestinian household consumption is less than one-third of Israel's. Israel's consumption of 100 cm/y per person (72 gallons per day) is comparable to European levels, whereas Palestinian household supply (22 gallons per day) is substandard. Moreover, perhaps half of the Palestinian supply gets lost in an outmoded distribution network, and the distribution is erratic, two days a week or less, notably in the summer months when it is vitally needed. It is estimated that a quarter to a third of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza does not receive running water. Hence many households are forced to purchase water from tank trucks or fetch it from the source, thus risking water-related diseases.
Despite the inferior quantities and service, the Palestinians in the West Bank are charged the same price as the Israelis. Taking into account the difference in personal income between the two sides, the Palestinians paid seven times as much for their household water as the Israelis in 1992.
Quantities apart, much of the water of Gaza's aquifer is no longer suitable for human consumption or even for the irrigation of many crops, notably citrus. The aquifer has been overdrawn for a long time and is now essentially moribund; restoring it would require nearly halving the present pumping rate. Gaza faces a potentially debilitating water problem because of the large gap between the available water and projected requirements. Meanwhile, the problem of supplying water to Gaza would have to await the final status talks (see section 2, "Water for Gaza").
Israel managed the water sector in Gaza for twenty-seven years and cannot blame the problem on the Egyptian administration before the occupation. Management aside, however, the critical water situation in Gaza partly can be attributed to cramming a large number of refugees there as a result of the creation of Israel in 1948.
Israelis argue that the low level of water use by the Palestinians reflects the difference in income between them and the Israelis. Income does affect the amount of water people consume, but there is no rule or formula that determines the level of use from the level of income. 40 For example, Mexico and Malaysia have nearly similar per-capita incomes, but a Malaysian consumes on the average approximately three times as much water as a Mexican. 41 Egypt has a much lower per-capita income than Oman, but the household water use per person in Egypt is greater. More to the point, the GNP in the West Bank in 1990 was nearly double that of Gaza, 42 yet their household use was similar.
The reason for these apparent incongruities is that household water consumption is also affected by factors other than income, such as the supply conditions (severely restrictive in the West Bank and Gaza), availability of sewage system (of poor quality and limited coverage) and price (high relative to the income level). 43 The 1993 World Bank report on the West Bank and Gaza economies concluded that household water use there was low relative to that of other countries with comparable incomes. 44 We estimate that, at a minimum, Palestinian unsatisfied or latent household water demand is equal to the present level of consumption. 45 In other words, the household demand ought to be at least double what it is at present.
The Palestinians and Israelis begin the final status talks on water with Israel firmly in control of the disputed water resources and with a wide gap between the two sides in access to these resources. The talks must resolve two core problems. In the treaties signed to date, the two sides have agreed that resolution of the water conflict would be based on the principles of equitable utilization of water rights and joint management (see section 3, "Recent Negotiations and Agreements"). Equitable utilization should address the problem of disparity of water extraction and use, whereas joint management would deal with the unilateral control of the water resources by Israel. In the Taba accords, the two sides recognized the necessity of producing extra water and shortly thereafter concluded a trilateral pact with Jordan on the principle of augmenting the water supply. Augmentation of water supply is predicated on the anticipated inadequacy of the fixed--perhaps even declining because of pollution--natural freshwater resources in the face of population and income growth and urbanization.
In addition to the two core issues, other matters must, implicitly or explicitly, be tackled as well, either in tandem or independently. They include water for Gaza, out-of-basin water transfer, the land-water nexus, compensation for the Palestinians for past damages, and the Israeli settlements' water supply. This long list of issues goes beyond the scope of this monograph; therefore, the bulk of the following discussion is devoted mainly to the two core issues. Other issues are only briefly outlined, except for the question of the augmentation of water, which is not dealt with at all because it is a project-based endeavor.
Here, water rights roughly mean a mutually recognized access by both sides to water quantities (fixed and/or percentages) under specific conditions pertaining to such things as points of extraction, seasons, and priorities. 46 Accordingly, the present allocations are de facto and must be signed and agreed to by the two parties to become de jure. Furthermore, Israel's acceptance in the DOP that such rights would be allocated equitably implies its recognition that the existing allocations are unequal (a situation amply demonstrated in the foregoing sections).
Neither the DOP nor subsequent accords spelled out criteria by which equitable utilization can be assessed. Nonetheless, equitable utilization and joint management are the central tenets of international water law of common international water resources. It is in international water law that the equitable utilization criteria must be found. The strengths and weaknesses of international water law and its evolution are not debated here. 47 It is sufficient to note that the law is nonbinding and lacks institutional mechanisms of enforcement. However, grounding the claims of a riparian in it lends those claims legitimacy at the same time that it circumscribes them--two essential ingredients for the creation of a stable water sharing regime.
Several doctrines of international water law have been invoked over the years in international water disputes. These include prior use, absolute hydrologic sovereignty, absolute hydrologic integrity, and limited hydrologic sovereignty. 48 Prior use essentially means that in any new division of water rights, the historic or established uses are paramount. Absolute hydrologic sovereignty accords the riparians absolute freedom to use international sources within their territories as they please. Absolute hydrologic integrity is the diametrical opposite of absolute sovereignty; it grants priority of access to the downstreamer. Limited hydrologic sovereignty is a midway doctrine between absolute sovereignty and integrity. Of the four doctrines, only limited sovereignty has gained wide acceptance. It has been imperfectly translated into operational form through the principle of "equitable utilization" of international law.
Following is a discussion of the factors that equitable utilization between the Palestinians and Israelis must consider. In addition, the doctrines of prior use and absolute sovereignty are examined because both have appeared in the stated negotiating positions and expert opinion of the two parties. The absolute integrity doctrine has not been brought up, nor is it likely to be invoked, by either side, and it is not taken up here. However, because there is a pre-existing, albeit unratified, treaty in the Jordan basin in the form of the Johnston plan, we first examine its legal standing and why it should still serve as a benchmark.
Legal Standing of the Johnston Plan
Today, in the multiriparian Jordan basin, the Palestinians and Lebanese base their water claims on the quotas of the Johnston plan. Jordan has been consistently favorable to the plan. Israel's water supply forecasts are predicated on the current share, which exceeds its quota under the plan. Syria has not taken a public stance regarding the plan during the peace negotiations. Assuming it regains the Golan Heights, it would probably rest its demands, as upstream riparians usually do, on its sizable contribution to the system. Cognizant of the location downstream of its major water source, the Euphrates river, 49 Syria may not carry the geography-based claim too far. However, its demands in the Jordan basin might also be inversely proportional to what it could secure from the Euphrates River. (The implication of this last point for water diplomacy in the region is highlighted in section 4, "Israel-Syria Talks.")
To put the preceding positions in perspective, the plan's legal standing must be clarified. The Johnston plan consisted of two aspects: water allocations and regional cooperation. The allocations were accepted by the Arab and Israeli technical committees, but the Arab side rested its acceptance of regional cooperation on the resolution of the Palestinian problem, and the plan was not ratified. Nevertheless, before 1967, Israel and Jordan adhered in their water withdrawals to the plan's quotas, and the United States conditioned its aid to the two countries for water-related projects in the basin on such adherence. 50 In fact, as late as 1964, when Israel was on the verge of inaugurating its major diversion project from Lake Tiberias, it regarded the plan as an achievement (and it was considering that the plan gave Israel close to one-third of the water). 51 The Johnston plan thus can be thought of as having "in effect functioned as a customary legal regime for the surface water of the [Jordan] Valley," 52 at least for Israel and Jordan.
Even after 1967, when Israel increased its water extraction from the basin, it justified its action partly by pointing to its control of the West Bank. 53 During the negotiations with Jordan on the al-Maqarin dam, Israel demanded a share of the water of the dam on the same grounds. 54
Such Israeli demands strengthen the case for the Johnston plan as customary law in the basin, even though they are not legitimate. Israel's demands equate occupation with sovereignty, as the late Palestinian geographer Bashir Nijim remarked, 55 and they ignore the fact that the West Bank's share was slated for its Palestinian population and not for the population of the ruling power. A peace accord granting Palestinians sovereignty over the West Bank would render Israeli claims to the West Bank's share even more untenable.
Another legal consideration that cannot be overlooked is Israel's transfer of water from the Jordan basin outside it. In the course of Johnston's mission, Israel demanded to be allowed to transfer water out of the Jordan basin and into the coastal plain and the Negev desert. The Arab riparians, at least initially, opposed this on the grounds that customary law did not allow such transfers until after the needs within the basin itself had been met. It has been suggested by several scholars that the Arab side probably implicitly approved Israel's demand, the approval being conditional on Israel's adherence to the quotas. 56 This seems to have been the position of the United States as well. 57 Later, Arab objections to the Israeli water carrier were based on fears borne out by subsequent events that Israel would exceed its quotas when the opportunity arose.
During Johnston's mission, Israel argued that the water it was going to transfer would not have been used efficiently by the Arab riparians and that, therefore, it was surplus water. 58 This argument confounded efficiency with equity, and it failed to identify the type of efficiency meant (i.e., whether technical or economic). Even if such an argument was valid forty or so years ago, it would no longer be so today, as was indicated earlier in the discussion of Israeli agriculture. If this is so, then the Palestinians would be on solid grounds legally, historically, and economically if they insist that their water needs within the basin must be met first before legitimizing Israel's out-of-basin transfers.
It is true that conditions in the basin have changed since the time of the plan, 59 but parallel changes have occurred in the main factors that drive water demand, especially population growth and urbanization. For example, Jordan received an influx of refugees from the West Bank as a result of the 1967 June war and from the Gulf as a result of the 1991 Gulf war; Israel received Soviet immigrants as of the late 1980s; and the Palestinian population has exploded, as Gaza, by virtue of coming under Palestinian jurisdiction, has become a riparian of the basin. The natural population increase in Syria has also been staggering.
Any attempt to overhaul the plan's quotas would in all likelihood come at the expense of the Palestinians and probably the Jordanians, the two vulnerable downstreamers. Lebanon's share is small and cannot be reduced further without making it irrelevant. Furthermore, given the fragmentation of the Arab position (in contrast to their coordinated stance during the Johnston mission) and the heightened concern in the region over future water shortages, assigning new quotas for the five riparians would be a protracted process, resulting in large opportunity costs for the Palestinian, Lebanese, and Jordanian riparians that do not have access to the basin.
Improvements in the plan could be introduced, however, without breaching the Johnston plan's basic allocations. For example, the plan's annual allocations could be refined by breaking them down into seasonal quotas, thereby making them more responsive to supply and demand variations (as was done in the Israel-Jordan water agreement). Another improvement would be to determine the quotas as percentages in addition to fixed quantities, so as to accommodate yearly rainfall fluctuation. Still another refinement would be to give Syria a choice between water it impounded behind the dams it built on the Yarmuk's tributaries and the water that the plan assigned to it from the Banyas and the Jordan. If Syria was to choose the latter option, the dams could still be used to regulate the flow for the downstreamers, who would compensate Syria financially in return. Moreover, regional cooperation, if it occurs, may permit the undertaking of projects that are more efficient than, and ecologically superior to, those proposed by the plan.
Harnessing the waters of the Jordan River basin should also heed the special place the Jordan River and its tributaries hold in world history and culture. The Jordan River system is not just a source of water supply; it is also a unique historical and ecological phenomenon. It has a central place in the history and mythology of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism and has been the subject of endless studies and descriptions. Its natural and historical features impart to the river system an indispensable "in-stream" value that must not be ignored in schemes to divide and develop its waters.
The instream value becomes even more obvious when we recognize that the Jordan River is the principal water source of the Dead Sea--itself of distinct natural and historical significance--and that substantial modification of its flow has a profound impact on the fragile ecology of this inland lake. Past uses have rendered the lower Jordan a dumping ditch for municipal waste water and return water from agriculture. Israel has diverted the largest of the saline springs along Lake Tiberias's shore to this lower reach. Water diversion from the Jordan River basin also adversely affected the natural and historical ecology of the Dead Sea by drying significant areas, notably in the southern half. Such ecological and cultural considerations must be central to any new management regime in this basin.
Prior Use
Israel has officially been inclined to view prior use as paramount in any future negotiations on water rights and for resolving the conflict and the problem of Palestinian water shortfalls. 60 The primacy of prior use also finds strong support in Israeli nonofficial expert opinion. 61 Israeli advocacy of prior use seems to ignore that the doctrine has "given origin neither to rules of international customary water law, nor to general principles of law recognized by civilized nations." 62 The maximum that can be said for prior use is what the widely accepted doctrine of "equitable utilization" says about it, and that is, it is one factor to be weighed against others, as is discussed below.
Israel's position is tantamount to invoking an absolutism of history rather than the absolutism of geography or the absolute sovereignty doctrine, even when its history of use is of such short duration compared, say, to Egypt's use of the Nile. Nor does it take into account that much of the short history of this "prior use" has been imposed by force or the threat of force and in the face of repeated protests by the Palestinians and the other Arab riparians of the Jordan basin, as indicated earlier (see section 1, "Control of Water Resources"). The prior use argument also ignores that Israel had acted in defiance of international law, which requires, among other things, prior notification. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, it failed to notify Jordan of its actions to alter the hydro ecological properties of the northeastern and western basins of the mountain aquifer by drying up the springs and replacing them with wells. 63 Moreover, the Israeli position overlooks the point that if the Israelis were entitled to prior use in the mountain aquifer, the Palestinian refugees, by the same logic, would be entitled to have access to the coastal and other aquifers in Mandate Palestine. The refugees have been prevented from access to these sources because of their expulsion in 1948 for which Israel bears at the very least partial responsibility, as is now widely acknowledged.
Absolute Hydrologic Sovereignty
According to the doctrine of absolute hydrologic sovereignty, countries have absolute say, stemming from their sovereignty over the territory, in how to use a common water resource in their territory. The doctrine is often contrasted with the limited hydrologic sovereignty doctrine, which roughly means that the claims of one riparian are to be constrained by the claims of others.
Absolute hydrologic sovereignty is essentially the declared position of the Palestinians. Israel has been acting as if it was the absolute sovereign over water resources, but the Palestinians have demanded that their groundwater rights be allocated in accordance with the replenishment area of the aquifers, which is tantamount to absolute sovereignty. 64 Their contention is that the West Bank should come under their sovereignty in fulfillment of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the terms of reference for the peace negotiations. Should water rights be thus divided, the Palestinians would be entitled to 80-90 percent of the water of the northeastern and western basins of the mountain aquifer and (essentially) to all of the water of the eastern basin. 65
In fact, common international mineral resources are divided in a manner akin to absolute sovereignty, and it can be argued, as some Palestinian and other experts have done, that the approach ought to be applicable to water as well. 66 Also, it can be maintained that Israel itself has set a precedent by acting as an absolute hydrologic sovereign, even when it lacked absolute territorial sovereignty over substantial portions of the common water resources.
It should be noted that the doctrine of absolute hydrologic sovereignty has seldom been applied and "has produced no rules of customary international water law." 67 If the Palestinian negotiators wish to anchor their water claims in international water law, they would have to take into account (1) the legal standing of this doctrine; (2) the fact that geography, which favors them in the mountain aquifer, does not in the rest of Mandate Palestine's resources, including in the Jordan basin; and (3) the need to balance demands for absolute sovereignty over the aquifers with demands for a share from the Jordan basin based on the limited sovereignty of the upstream riparians. Another consideration is that if Israel accepted this principle regarding the groundwater, it would have to yield to it also in the Jordan basin. In the Jordan basin, Syria, a more formidable neighbor than the Palestinians, stands in the upstream, which means that Israel would be entitled only to a small amount of water proportional to its contribution to the basin, according to the absolute sovereignty doctrine.
Limited Hydrologic Sovereignty and Equitable Utilization
Limited hydrologic sovereignty means that the use of a common international water resource by one riparian would be circumscribed by the use of other riparians. Limited sovereignty has been imperfectly translated into a practical guideline by the doctrine of equitable utilization. For utilization to be equitable, several "factors" have to be weighed against each other. They can be aggregated into (1) the natural attributes of the water resources, (2) prior use, (3) social and economic needs, (4) relative capability of riparians to tap alternative water resources, and (5) avoidance of appreciable harm. 68 All are to be weighed, and none is paramount. According to Robert Hayton and Albert Utton, "[t]his language [weighing all the different factors] has become accepted virtually universally." 69
The multiplicity of factors and the lack of hierarchical preferences open the door for the parties to the conflict to accentuate those that are advantageous to them. This could have the effect of making apportionment more a function of power or other extraneous factors than of equity. On the other hand, this very multiplicity ensures that the odds are rarely stacked against one side. If approached in good faith, they would balance the interests of the various parties.
The doctrine of equitable utilization "enjoys wide acceptance today and is part of general international law." 70 Some of the most authoritative international bodies and authors have followed this approach, including the International Law Association (ILA) and the United Nations International Law Commission (ILC). In fact, the first list of factors above was composed in 1966 by the ILA in what has become known as the Helsinki Rules of Equitable Utilization. 71 Also, similar factors have been incorporated in the draft "Rules on Non-Navigational Use of International Watercourse" submitted by the ILC first in 1991 and then in 1994 to the General Assembly for revision and approval. 72 It is worth repeating that the Palestinian-Israeli DOP used the term "equitable utilization" as a basic tenet for the allocation of water rights--the same term used in the Helsinki and the ILC Draft Rules.
How Should Equitable Utilization Be Assessed?
Translating such factors into water rights in the Palestinian-Israeli context may have to be based on the following considerations. Israeli claims to prior use (factor 2 above) are indefensible and outweighed by the geography factor (factor 1) in the mountain aquifer and in the Jordan basin (Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan). Given the redundancy in this context of factor 5, 73 the list of factors boils down to the socially and economically based water needs (factor 3) and the relative ability of the two sides to tap alternative water sources (factor 4).
The social and economic needs should be assessed on a long-term basis, for the following reasons. Water requirements increase over time because of population and income growth; supply projects need large initial outlays and hence staggered investments; and, considering the problems involved, negotiations over water rights cannot be a frequent affair. Neither side is likely to object to this proposition. Israel has been a long-term planner; the 1994 report to the World Bank by Ben-Gurion University and Tahal, for instance, anticipates conditions of supply and demand, including those of the West Bank and Gaza, to the year 2040. The Palestinians would be at a disadvantage if demand was to be assessed on a short-term basis, because it would reflect their past restricted supply.
Forecasting water use depends on many uncertain factors, especially population size and rates of economic growth. It also depends on whether the needs are prescribed or extrapolated from present demand. Forecasting them can therefore be controversial, as illustrated by projections made by the Palestinians and Israelis, and resolution of this matter is therefore necessary.
Whatever the controversy, equitable utilization would have to be based on the equality of the social and economic needs of both sides, as measured by per-capita statistics. Accordingly, an equitable solution would mean, as a first step, the allocation of the naturally occurring freshwater resources of Mandate Palestine between the Israelis and Palestinians in proportion to population sizes. In addition to being equitable, this proposition also has the advantage of reducing the variables to be forecast to one variable, population size. All projections indicate that the population of the West Bank and Gaza and Israel would be around 20 million by the year 2040, if not before. Assuming that its quality is maintained, the available water in Mandate Palestine would be sufficient only to meet the household and industrial demands of both sides at the current Israeli per-capita use of 120 cm/y, with nothing left over for agricultural use.
If water rights were to be allocated on the basis of equal per-capita demand, Israel would still be at an advantage because it enjoys a much greater economic and technological capability than the Palestinians to exploit alternative resources, be they desalination or the Negev aquifer. In contrast, the West Bank is landlocked and Gaza has a short coastline that could support only one major desalination plant. In fact, Israel announced a year ago a phased desalination program that would produce 900 mcm/y by the year 2020, the equivalent of one-and-a-half mountain aquifers! 74 The desalinated water, together with Israel's quota under the Johnston plan and the equivalent of the renewable groundwater resources other than the mountain and Gaza aquifers (table 1), all would amount to about 2,000 mcm/y. Furthermore, recycling only half of this quantity would bring Israel's supply to a total of 3,000 mcm/y, without tapping into the fossil aquifer of the Negev desert, which could be utilized for irrigation. Thus, Israel would end up with more water than its demand for the year 2040 as projected by the Ben-Gurion University and Tahal report to the World Bank. 75
The Palestinian population, even by Israeli projections, is expected to reach more than half of Israel's by the year 2040. If the Palestinians were accorded all the water of the mountain aquifer or its equivalent, Gaza's aquifer (if it can be resuscitated), and their quota under the Johnston plan, and generously assuming 50 percent recycling, their total supply would be less than half of Israel's. In other words, even with all these resources, the water supply would still fall short of enabling the Palestinians to meet their social and economic needs at Israel's level. Diversion of the full allocations of water rights can be phased, but the delivery of substantial amounts of water to Palestinian households and agriculture can begin immediately after an agreement is reached.
International water law has consistently advocated the joint management of common water resources and their treatment as unitary basins or watersheds. For example, the 1991 Draft Articles of the ILC submitted to the UN General Assembly stated that riparians of a watercourse "shall, at the request of any of them, enter into consultations concerning the management of an international watercourse, which may include the establishment of a joint management mechanism." 76
The objectives of joint management are stated in general terms in the Draft Articles. 77 They include sustainability, optimal use, protection, and control of the water resources. They are to be undertaken on the basis of the riparians' sovereign equality, territorial integrity, and mutual benefit. 78
The Palestinians and Israelis have agreed that the common water resources would be managed jointly. At present, only the water resources under Palestinian jurisdiction are jointly managed, a remarkably asymmetrical arrangement and unlike anything intimated by international water law. A final status accord would have to rectify this situation and devise a joint management regime that is responsive to hydrologic boundaries rather than political expediency. Such an accord must also specify the tasks to be shouldered cooperatively and a commensurate joint management body. The constitution of a joint institution is too speculative in the absence of an agreement on the tasks it would be set up to perform. 79 For this reason, only the question of tasks is presently tackled.
Theoretically, the tasks that can be undertaken by a joint management body are numerous. They might include protection of water quantity and quality, verification, notification, dispute resolution, transboundary water marketing or trade (see Appendix 2), and drought management. Whereas these may sound like technical tasks, the manner of their implementation necessitates the reconciliation of some fundamental political and economic interests. Ideally, each individual task and the questions it raises should be examined separately, but that would be too lengthy for the present monograph. Instead, we look at the tasks through the lens of the potential political and economic issues that would require reconciliation. These issues are as follows: the desired level of cooperation among the two sides in general, not just in the water field; sovereignty; and the sharing of management costs. The following discussion is divided into two parts: The first deals with the groundwater resources and the second with the Jordan basin. The political and economic constraints are more pervasive in the case of the groundwater than in the case of the Jordan basin's surface water and need. Also, the Jordan basin requires a multilateral agreement among the five riparians, whereas the groundwater needs a bilateral Palestinian-Israeli agreement.
The Common Groundwater
Experience in joint management of common aquifers is scant, and no models exist that can be readily adopted for the Israeli-Palestinian context. 80 The Bellagio Draft Treaty, however, may have some relevance to the Israeli-Palestinian case. The treaty was based on the U.S.-Mexican experience in their semi-arid border zones and was meant to serve as a model for other groundwater basins. 81 It covers a wide range of tasks--including protection against pollution, database, and declaration of drought--that a joint water institution might undertake. It also contains sections on reconciling differences and resolving disputes, which have often been missing from water treaties. 82
The Bellagio Draft Treaty is mainly about the procedures to be followed by, and the authority accorded to, the joint management body. Although the rationale for these procedures is not furnished in the text, the basic premise is that despite a possible commonality of interests, there will also be divergences stemming, for instance, from the different stages of economic development. The treaty also deals sensitively with sovereignty-related matters. These premises are particularly germane in the Israeli-Palestinian case. Although not all the tasks it enumerates need to be adopted in a joint Palestinian-Israeli management project, it is a document well worth careful reading by the Palestinians, especially for its rigorous details, precise language, and the gamut of issues it raises. Still, though the Bellagio treaty may offer some clues, the two parties must strive to develop their own mode of management.
From Mortal Enemies to Intimate Neighbors?
Two political considerations are germane to the management of the common aquifers. One is the level of linkage the two sides wish to develop in their overall relationship. The second is sovereignty. The greater the number of tasks tackled jointly and the wider their scope, the more extensive the level of attendant cooperation. Such cooperation is not without repercussions. While a water specialist is proposing close cooperation in the water sphere, an economist may be advocating a customs union between the two sides, and an energy specialist may be promoting the linking of electrical grids. When such proposals are aggregated, they add up to a project of virtual economic union which, if the European experience of economic integration is an indicator, will have profound political repercussions.
It is true that such a union, albeit totally asymmetrical and forced on the Palestinians, has been in effect since the capture of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel in 1967. However, what is being addressed here is voluntary cooperation. Two central questions regarding such cooperation are: Would the most mortal of enemies wish to become the most intimate of neighbors, and is this possible? At present, there is no clear consensus on either side that indicates what to expect. Nature, geography, and certain economic interests propel the Palestinians and Israelis toward close ties, whereas contemporary history, cultural differences, and unequal levels of development and capabilities push them in the opposite direction. Nor should it be assumed, as it sometimes is by well-meaning people on both sides and from the outside, that closer cooperation is automatically beneficial for the Palestinians, for the Israelis, or for coexistence. Regardless of how relations between the two antagonists may unfold, it is within the wider framework of these relations that the Palestinian leadership must establish guidelines for its negotiators concerning the levels of cooperation in joint management.
Sovereignty.
Sovereignty, particularly that of the Palestinian polity, can be profoundly encroached upon by joint management tasks, unless the powers of the joint institution are restrained. Palestinian sovereignty is particularly vulnerable in the water domain because an extensive area in the West Bank overlies the northeastern and western basins of the mountain aquifer, where Palestinian-Israeli hydrological interdependence is most intensive. It is precisely this area that has the largest population concentration in the West Bank.
Several illustrative, though not exhaustive, examples illuminate the relationship between joint management and sovereignty.
1. In order to verify that Palestinian water withdrawal matches the agreed-on allocations, the Taba agreement (Annex III, Article 40, Schedule 9.4) empowers Israeli personnel on the Joint Water Committee to inspect (jointly with Palestinians) the hundreds of Palestinian wells scattered across the West Bank. In contrast, the Palestinians cannot inspect the settlements' wells. Apart from the blatant one-sidedness, which might be rationalized as a reflection of the abnormality of the interim phase, such an arrangement would visibly violate Palestinian sovereignty in the future.
Naturally, verification is indispensable for an accord involving allocations, but it should be mutual. It also could be executed by technical and less intrusive means. For instance, electronic devices may be installed on the pumps for recording the wells' logs and transmitting them to the joint institution for inspection. This procedure could be started immediately, perhaps with the recently created trilateral Israeli-Palestinian-American committee (see section 4, "The Israeli-Palestinian-American Committee"), so that it would be in place by the time a final status treaty is concluded. If, however, Israel insists on in-situ verification, it should reciprocate by accepting similar Palestinian activity on its territory.
2. Protection of the quality of the groundwater requires policy measures that could affect virtually every potential water-contaminating activity in the area overlying the aquifers, such as waste water release, land use, agricultural practices, and location of storage facilities for toxic materials. 83 The measures may be regulatory, designed for a particular source, or they could involve powers to review effluent discharge plans by the appropriate level of government (municipal, ministry).
By way of example, regulatory measures could apply to the performance, technical aspects, or best management criteria of the source. Performance regulations might specify the level of treatment of waste water before disposal or how much a particular source, such as septic tanks, can discharge. Furthermore, they might outright ban the disposal of certain pesticides or hazardous industrial wastes that can readily leach into the groundwater or require that an enterprise clean up its waste site before it can sell the property. Technical regulations also might set construction standards, such as type and thickness of liners for landfill or storage tanks. Best management regulations, on the other hand, might specify provisions for managing, operating, or maintaining a source or a facility. For instance, in agriculture such regulations may require farmers to observe those techniques that are most effective in the control of the runoff of water and pesticides.
Apart from contamination sources, regulatory measures might target land use itself by enforcing zoning laws that prohibit (for instance) the establishment of industries in certain locations or by declaring limited areas around municipal water wells as "protected" and restricting activities on them.
The point that emerges from the foregoing illustrations is that, to be effective, water protection measures must be spatially and functionally ubiquitous. They cannot possibly be implemented by a joint institution without considerable infringement on sovereignty. To avoid such an outcome and still ensure the integrity of the aquifers, general provisions could be devised that (for example) obligate both sides to treat waste water to certain standards before releasing it into the environment or to refrain from the use of certain toxic substances. It could also require them to notify the joint management body about past or future activities that could be hazardous to the aquifers. Equally significant, it ought to be kept in mind that the Palestinians, if accorded their fair share of the groundwater, would have high stakes in caring for these aquifers because they might have nowhere else to go for water if the aquifers were damaged.
3. The dispute resolution mechanism in the Taba agreement (Article 40. 12. f.) confines the deliberations to the Joint Water Committee; disputes are not to be mediated by third parties. On the face of it, this may seem a reciprocal arrangement. In reality, it awards Israel veto power over the Palestinians' ability to alter the unfavorable status quo, because joint management does not apply to Israel's water sector, and control on the ground is largely in its hands.
Changing this situation in the upcoming talks necessitates the establishment of a more open, hierarchical procedure. For example, resolution of a given dispute would first be attempted within the joint management body itself; if that failed after a specified time lapse, the governments themselves would take up the matter. If the governments fail to resolve their differences, they would resort to mediation, conciliation, and arbitration at the International Court of Justice or any other channel they deem appropriate. 84
In general, the sensitivities regarding sovereignty can be addressed by measures that make infringement largely unnecessary and by the mutuality of arrangements, as recommended by international law.
Cost Sharing.
The main relevant costs here involve aquifer water quality protection measures. These can be direct--for example, waste water treatment or rehabilitation of an aquifer area after oil leakage--or indirect, such as a drop in agricultural yields owing to reduction in the use, or banning, of certain chemical inputs. In either case, the costs would be ongoing and incurred in numerous activities. Consequently, a joint management agreement would have to answer two questions: How would costs be estimated and how would they be divided between the two sides? The first question can be merely noted here, because it involves numerous technical details.
As for the question of dividing costs, a number of points should be made. Protection measures would be necessary on both sides of the border. However, since protection of the upstream of the mountain aquifer by the Palestinians would benefit both sides, the Israelis would have to share the cost. This is not a novel suggestion and is in line with the "user-pays" principle. It is practiced elsewhere; for example, Germany and the Netherlands share the French costs of pollution control in the Rhine river basin. 85 If countries are willing to shoulder water protection costs with their economic equals, it would be even more incumbent on Israel to do so with the Palestinians.
Joint Management of the Jordan Basin
Management of the Jordan basin as a hydrological unit would have to include all five riparians, and this is indispensable for a stable water allocations regime and for water and ecological conservation. In fact, this type of integrated management constituted the second half of the Johnston plan and was even proposed by Israel itself in the course of the Johnston mission. 86 At the time, it was not possible because it would have required putting the cooperation cart before the political accommodation horse.
Today, however, accommodation is on the table and integrated management should have a better chance of implementation than it did forty years ago. Whether the Palestinians would have immediately to work out joint management arrangements with Israel and Jordan (which shares with the West Bank the final segment of the lower Jordan River), excluding Syria and Lebanon would depend on the scenario yielded by the Israel-Syria talks (see section 4, "Context of Negotiations"). Irrespective of whether the management mode negotiated initially would be trilateral or quintilateral, the provisions of the Israel-Jordan water agreement regarding (among others issues) water quality protection, verification, and notification could be taken up as points of departure for the new more encompassing regime.
The notable item in the Israel-Jordan agreement for the protection of the water of the Jordan and Yarmuk Rivers is the prohibition against dumping municipal and industrial waste waters before they are treated to irrigation standards (Annex II, Article III. 3 and 5). 87 Verification of water flows and quality, according to the agreement, would be executed by the use "of jointly established stations to be operated under the guidance" of the joint water committee (Annex II, Article III.2). Gauging the flow of the river is not technically demanding; it can be done at a relatively small number of fixed stations along its course and does not visibly encroach on sovereignty. Last, notification is required "six months ahead of time" with respect to "any intended projects which are likely to change the flow of either of the above [the Jordan or Yarmuk] rivers along their common boundary, or the quality of such flow" (Annex II, Article V.1 and 2). The last provision is predicated on the understanding that artificial changes in the course of the two rivers be made only by mutual consent.
Gaza, whose natural freshwater supply is certain to fall drastically short of its projected requirements, can be supplied from one source or a combination of sources: from desalination of seawater or conduits bringing in water from the Nile, the West Bank, or Israel. Importing water from the Nile is in all likelihood infeasible, requiring the consent of eight Nile countries other than Egypt. Desalination can be undertaken without negotiations with Israel, but importing water from Israel or transporting it from the West Bank is possible only through arrangements with Israel. The Palestinians would, of course, first have to assess which options are most favorable to them.
Any appraisal of water supply options for Gaza must factor in vulnerability, integration of the West Bank and Gaza, and economics. For example, water supply from desalination is less vulnerable than water supply from the West Bank, but the latter has integrative effects on the two geographically separated Palestinian regions. Israel, of course, can easily bomb a desalination plant; still, it is easier and less visible to tamper with the spigot than to raid a water facility. At any rate, the focus here is not on vulnerability in time of war, but on that resulting from the vicissitudes of everyday relations or from low-level hostilities. Under such circumstances, desalination is less risky than supply from the West Bank. The selection of an option must include weighing the risks against the integrative effects (or lack thereof), while also considering the comparative economic costs of each.
The preceding is only a schematic illustration of what a comparison of options might include; a systematic appraisal to determine the optimum sources of supply is indispensable.
The land-water nexus refers to the potential loss of one resource as a result of the loss of the other. 88 As discussed in section 1 ("Control of Water Resources"), the progressive loss of territory by the Palestinians brought in its wake a loss of water resources. In addition, the loss of control over water resources by Palestinian Israeli citizens led to land alienation. Of concern in connection with the final status negotiations is the advocacy by influential Israeli water and security experts of the retention of territory along the western border of the West Bank with Israel that they judge to be critical for Israeli water extraction downstream. Of equal concern is the potential loss of water, or at least of natural-rights' claims to water, because of land alienation to Israel for reasons other than water. The key example of this would be the retention by Israel of the area along the Jordan River, an action that would vitiate the status of the West Bank as a riparian of the Jordan basin and could result in denying it a share of the basin's waters. It ought to be kept in mind that the two mentioned zones have been kept outside the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority in the Taba agreement.
Despite past advocacy of land annexation for reasons of hydrology, Israel is unlikely to use hydrology as a justification for retention of West Bank border areas during the negotiations. It is more likely to appeal to the "more credible," time-tested rationale, security. Nor, from a Palestinian point of view, is the loss of water the most compelling reason not to accede to the annexation of territory by Israel. Nonetheless, when Israel presents boundary maps at the negotiations table, the Palestinian negotiators should scrutinize their water consequences.
As an overarching principle for the resolution of the conflict, security arrangements for Israel need not compromise Palestinian jurisdiction over their natural resources, be they land or water. This principle is in contrast to the Israeli practice, since its seizure of the West Bank and Gaza, of cordoning off entire areas under the pretext of security.
As indicated in section 1 ("The Consumption Gap"), Israel's policy regarding the Palestinian water sector since 1967 has limited agricultural expansion in the West Bank (although lack of water is not the only reason for it); kept household use at a low level, adversely affecting the quality of life; and undermined local institutional development. The Palestinians have demanded compensation for these injurious effects, citing a series of United Nations' resolutions that called on Israel to alter its policies. 89 That the interim agreements do not include any clauses on compensation does not preclude raising the issue in the final status talks. Whether water-related demands for compensation would be raised separately or incorporated within a general package, the Palestinians must quantify them and elaborate the supporting legal and technical arguments. The most straightforward of the claims pertain to the curtailment of the horizontal expansion of agriculture.
The question of the Israeli settlements' water supply will depend on their final status, a topic beyond the scope of the present monograph. The following are some of the questions that may arise in conjunction with the final status of particular settlements. If, for instance, a substantial number of settlers left the West Bank, would Israel dismantle the water-supply infrastructure, or would it want to use it as part of an economic bargain? Would the Palestinians be interested in keeping only portions of the infrastructure? These questions can be dealt with only after a detailed physical and economic inventory of the settlements' water system is made available to the Palestinians, and, perhaps, after plans assessing the water infrastructural requirements of the West Bank and Gaza are drafted.
If, on the other hand, many settlers remained under Palestinian rule, the problem that would have to be addressed is the water gap between them and the Palestinians. What kind of supply regime would be set up for the settlers who stay? It should be recalled that the water quotas and prices for the settlers differ from those for the Palestinians. Would the remaining settlers be subject to Palestinian water laws, regulations, quotas, and prices, or would the Israeli government insist on maintaining its former privileges? If so, who would pay for the subsidies? Answers to such questions would obviously transcend considerations of water, because they impinge on Palestinian sovereignty.
3. Recent Negotiations and Agreements
Since the inauguration of the peace talks in 1991, the water issue has been debated bilaterally between Israel and the Palestinians and in the international Multilateral Working Group on Water (MWGW). 90 Without delving into the history of these negotiations, the MWGW veered away from discussion of water rights, largely at the behest of Israel and the United States, and took up topics like databanks, enhancement of water supply, and water supply and demand projections. 91 In early 1996, Syria proposed that the matter of water rights in the Jordan basin be discussed in the MWGW; whether Syria's call will be heeded remains to be seen (see section 4, "Israel-Syria Talks").
For Palestinians, the MWGW afforded small sums of money (at least pledges) for various projects. 92 For Israel, the MWGW and other multilateral forums (like the economic summits) served first and foremost as a portal for "introducing" it into Arab capitals and for establishing footholds for future normalization. One clear example of this is the creation of the desalination research center in Oman in 1995, with Israeli membership. Israel is keen on using desalination and selling desalination technology to the Gulf and Saudi markets, the largest such markets in the world.
In the bilateral track, Israel under Yitzhak Shamir's Likud government held an extremist position that deemed the Palestinians mere residents of the West Bank and Gaza and rejected any discussion of water (or land) rights, only use. 93 The Likud's position was gradually modified by the Labor government, and the scope of the talks was broadened in principle beyond water use to include water rights and joint management.
The result of the negotiations has been the three water agreements included in the DOP and the Cairo and Taba accords. The DOP (Article III.1) stipulated two general principles for the resolution of the conflict: equitable allocation of water rights in the common resources and the joint management of these resources. The Cairo agreement (Annex II.31) applied only to Gaza and Jericho and essentially maintained the status quo, except for the transfer of water management to the Palestinian Authority in the territory under its control. The Taba agreement is more elaborate than the DOP or the Cairo accord. It gave the Palestinians "Additional Water" 94 and preserved the settlements' water supply at the pre-existing levels despite earlier criticism (including by Israel's State Comptroller) that such usage exceeded even official quotas. It also made joint management arrangements for the Palestinian sector, as is explained below.
Overall, the agreements apply to the interim stage and only broadly to the permanent phase. This monograph accentuates their implications for the latter.
The agreements defined in broad strokes a time frame, two major agenda items, and an institutional framework for the final status talks. These were first spelled out in the DOP (Annex III, Article 1), which stated that a "Water Development Program" would be
prepared by experts from both sides, which will also specify the mode of cooperation in the management of water resources in the West Bank and Gaza, and will include proposals for studies and plans on water rights of each party, as well as on the equitable utilization of joint water resources for implementation in and beyond the interim period.
Thus the statement unequivocally slated two items--the equitable allocation of water rights in, and joint management of, common water resources--for future negotiations. The loosely defined implementation time horizon "beyond the interim period" in the DOP was later fixed in the Taba agreement to be coterminous with the final status talks: "These [water rights in the West Bank] will be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations and settled in the Permanent Status Agreement relating to the various water resources" (Annex III, Article 40. 1).
After initial Israeli objections, the water rights item of the DOP was further reaffirmed in the Taba agreement: "Israel recognizes the Palestinian water in the West Bank" (Annex III, Article II, 1). It is telling that Israel felt it could balk at the inclusion of an item it had already agreed to in inclusive and specific language in the DOP. To carry the DOP forward on water rights, the Taba agreement should have also named the resources to which the Palestinians had rights and which would be the subject of bargaining in the final talks.
Another part of the Taba agreement that is germane to the issue of water rights is the additional water to be supplied to the West Bank and Gaza by Israel during the transitional period. The additional allocations fall short even of the lowest Palestinian expert demand projections. Although they add to Palestinian supply, they 95 affect Israel's at most only marginally; as such, they do not constitute a shift away from Israel's position regarding the primacy of prior use.
Most of the additional water is envisaged to be supplied by the Palestinians themselves, from the eastern basin of the mountain aquifer. However, a portion of the immediate (and probably the more assured) supply is to be extended by Israel (4.5 mcm/y for the West Bank and 10 mcm/y for Gaza). Israel, through the network of its water company, Mekorot, has already been supplying about one-half of the running household water to the Palestinians in the West Bank. 96 The new arrangement therefore reinforces Palestinian dependence on Mekorot's water. Instead of paving the way for future water "disengagement," Israel appears to be saying that even if the Palestinians were to obtain more water in the future from the mountain aquifer, the water would come partly (if not primarily) through Israel. Providing the Palestinians with water from Israel would be tantamount to turning Israel into an upstreamer of the aquifer.
As for the joint management of water resources, the Taba agreement granted the Palestinians a role, albeit a highly confined one, in the management of the water sector in the West Bank. This would seem to represent an advance over the past, when Israel had absolute power over management. 97 The Palestinians will be part of a Joint Water Committee made up of equal members of both sides (Article 40. 3.11 and 3.13). However, the spatial scope of the committee's authority is confined to the Palestinian sector only and does not extend to the settlements or to the hydrological boundaries of the water resources inside Israel. Furthermore, "[a]ll decisions" of the Committee "shall be reached by consensus" (Article 40. 14), which in effect grants Israel veto power over the Palestinians' ability to alter the unfavorable status quo. The committee is empowered to grant licenses for well-digging and other water-related activities, but the consensus requirement means that licensing remains in Israel's hands. "Joint Supervision and Enforcement Teams" will also inspect (among other things) the compliance of Palestinian wells with pumping quotas (Article 40, Schedule 9). All the preceding provisions must be changed in a final status agreement, because, as they stand, they would impinge heavily on Palestinian sovereignty.
In sum, if the agreements concluded thus far are implemented, they will somewhat enhance Palestinian supply and give Palestinian personnel a severely truncated role in the management of water resources under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority. The basic questions of equitable water rights and joint management on the basis of mutuality and equality thus await resolution in the final status talks.
4. The Context of Negotiations
The purpose of addressing the context of the talks is not to predict their outcome but to identify the main parameters that offer the two sides (dis)incentives to reach an agreement and that might weaken or strengthen their negotiating positions. Only water-related considerations are discussed here, leaving aside such factors as the balance of power and the relative stakes of both sides in an agreement that might affect the whole gamut of issues to be negotiated, besides water. This section considers the relative negotiating capabilities of both sides, agenda, linkage of water to other hydrostrategic constraints, trilateral Israeli-Palestinian-American Joint Committee, and method of negotiations.
Many Palestinians who support accommodation with Israel in principle but are critical of the unfavorable terms of the accords have attributed this outcome at least partly to the unpreparedness of Palestinian negotiators. Although the salience of the negotiating capability as a determinant of outcome is debatable, there is no doubt that Israel's already superior position has been strengthened by the considerable financial and human resources it has devoted over the years to information gathering--greatly facilitated by its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza--to analysis, and to planning. The Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, on the other hand, have been handicapped by their lack of institutions and dearth of cumulative information and studies even about their own economy and water sector, not to mention about those of their adversary or Arab neighbors. These handicaps are being corrected, but not with sufficient urgency or quality. Although the final status talks have been inaugurated and the issues need to be fully digested in advance, the Palestinians have yet to put together an integrated water team with diversified expertise that can formulate a vision and a coherent strategy with options and contingencies. Preparedness may not guarantee a favorable outcome, but it is doubtful that such an outcome can be realized without preparedness.
The final status negotiations on water would commence with an agenda, or at least a partial agenda, of the issues to be resolved. Of the issues discussed in the present monograph, only the core issues--water rights and joint management--have been named. Allocation of water rights has been the principal Palestinian demand throughout the negotiations, whereas joint management has been a priority for the Israelis regarding the mountain aquifer and for the Palestinians regarding the coastal aquifer, wadi Gaza, and the Jordan River basin. A third point over which the two sides concurred in the Taba agreement, but which is not necessarily an agenda item, is that they both "recognize the necessity to develop additional water for various uses" (Article 40. 2).
To the extent that defining the agenda of the negotiations reflects the advancement of a party's position, the above agenda represents a gain for both sides. The equitable allocation of water rights and joint management can be seen as complementary and mutually reinforcing. The former would not just be an act of good neighborliness, it also would give the Palestinians an incentive to care for the common water resources, which is a central Israeli demand. And joint management would, among other things, ensure verification that the agreement on water rights is properly implemented and provide the context for future cooperation.
Identification of water as a final status issue elevates it to the rank of "high" as opposed to "low" politics. Still, it is difficult to know the importance each party will assign it relative to other issues. If the water question is to be negotiated as part of a "package deal" involving other major final status issues, the weight assigned to it could be affected by how each side assesses its gains and losses regarding the other issues. For example, would the Israelis compromise over water if the Palestinians were forthcoming on security arrangements? If the Palestinians secured a decent deal on the settlements or Jerusalem yet water seemed like a stumbling block to an accord, would they then downplay its prominence? Although such questions may not be explicitly spelled out, they could be implicitly factored into the bargaining process.
The Israelis cannot cling to the "prior use" notion if the negotiations are to move forward, but Likud's past ideological stance of not recognizing that Palestinians have water rights is less than reassuring. 98 Beyond ideology, water is an area where Israel can be flexible because it can deploy its considerable economic and technological power to treat substantial amounts of waste water and exploit alternative resources. In all likelihood, Israel can be expected to attach whatever concessions it might make on water rights to securing deals for joint, water-related projects to create (inter)dependencies to cement the peace, as well as to guarantee financial gains (from third parties) to implement such projects.
As for the Palestinians, an accord on water simultaneous with ones on the other final status issues could be politically easier for the leadership than a separate one, owing to the ambiguities and stakes inherent in an overall peace accord. Also, tucking water provisions somewhere in the thicket of an agreement (in the extraordinarily long text of the Taba accord, water appeared in Annex III, Article 40) and retailing water quantities from various sources (as was done in the Israel-Jordan agreement) would discourage close public scrutiny of the outcome.
However, it would be shortsighted for the Palestinian leadership to agree to a poor deal on water provided it could be veiled. Water shortfalls can have a long-term, adverse impact on the country's carrying, if not absorptive, capacity; on its quality of life; and on its economic performance. Therefore, water ought to be dealt with largely on its own merits as an independent issue.
The contested Israeli-Palestinian water resources possess several attributes with significant ramifications for the water conflict and its resolution. For one thing, the heavy interconnectedness of these resources makes the conflict more intense, but it can also be a goad for its resolution. Another vital feature of the common resources is that Israel contributes very little to the mountain aquifer, the centerpiece of the groundwater resources, and the Jordan River basin. That is why Israel managed to appropriate the bulk of these resources only through the use, or threat of the use, of force and through occupation of the headwaters (this is not to suggest that water was the reason, although it may have been a reason, for Israel's expansion). However, that is also why Israel would have a significant incentive to compromise, if it decided to withdraw from the Arab territories that contain the headwaters.
The Israel-Syria talks are vital for both the Israelis and Palestinians because of their claims in the Jordan River basin. Eventually, the river would have to be managed as an integral unit, which entails a pact among the five riparians. The Israelis might prefer a series of bilateral pacts because that would place them at the hub of the management of the river system and because they might be concerned about being in the minority in a multilateral institution including four Arab riparians. On the other hand, regional cooperation has been a central theme in Israeli diplomacy, and in the context of the river, past Zionist and Israeli plans envisioned a unified basin. However, it is uncertain whether or when a multilateral accord will come about, in part because the time frame of the Israel-Syria talks and their handling of the water question are unpredictable.
Three "scenarios" for the Israel-Syria talks and their ramifications for the Israeli-Palestinian track are considered here. In the first scenario, the Israel-Syria negotiations would be protracted and no accord would be forged until after the final status talks. In this case, the Palestinians can be expected to demand the release by Israel of their share of the water that Israel now diverts for its own use. A trilateral management arrangement including Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian polity would have to be devised in the interim.
In the second scenario, Israel and Syria would ratify a water agreement before Israel and the Palestinians do. If the allocations in such an agreement were different from those of the Johnston plan, Palestinian demands in the aquifer system would be affected by how much water is left for them after Israel, Syria, and Lebanon take their shares. Moreover, the Jordan-Israel water agreement, even in the absence of an Israel-Syria accord, has made it harder for the Palestinians to squeeze out their share in the basin from Israel. That is because, according to the agreement, Jordan and Israel would impound essentially all the untapped water from the segments of the lower Jordan and Yarmuk Rivers that are covered by the agreement, leaving the Palestinians to demand that Israel release water it already exploits. Overall, this second scenario is perhaps the most disadvantageous to the Palestinians owing to their most downstream location in the basin and lack of means to effect a different outcome.
In the third scenario, the question of the Jordan basin's waters would be tackled in the international MWGW, as Syria proposed in early 1996. 99 If the multilateral parley adopts the proposal, the Israelis and Palestinians might elect to include all the common groundwater resources in these talks as well. If they do not, the course of their bilateral talks would certainly be influenced by developments in the multilateral parley.
Whatever the scenario, Syria's demands in the basin are critical. As was conjectured earlier, these demands might be linked to how much Syria can obtain from the Euphrates basin, its major water source. To minimize Syrian demands and make a solution in the Jordan basin easier, the downstreamers--Jordan, the Palestinians, and Israel--or the United States (on their behalf) could encourage Turkey to be forthcoming regarding the division of the Euphrates waters and link a positive Turkish response to Syria's demands in the Jordan basin.
For the Palestinians in particular, their fortunes in the Jordan basin clearly depend not just on Israel's stance, but on Syria's as well, assuming Syria regains the Golan Heights. Therefore, the Palestinians must initiate a dialogue with Syria on the matter, however difficult that might be.
The trilateral Israeli-Palestinian-American committee was formed in August 1995, and one of its tasks, in addition to economic issues and political coordination, is water production. 100 The Taba agreement also stipulated that the bilateral Israeli-Palestinian water committee would cooperate with the trilateral committee "on water production and development" (Article 40. 20.c). Enhancement of water supply has been central to Israeli thinking. The Palestinians have not stressed it, not because they do not need the extra water, but because of Israel's view of it as a substitute for the reallocation of water rights. One may expect that the American role will be largely to locate technical and financial assistance for water augmentation, conservation, and quality improvement. It is possible that the trilateral committee will be a forum for debating other topics, especially water rights or joint management, particularly if the bilateral talks get bogged down.
Method of negotiations refers to direct bilateral talks, mediation, or arbitration. Negotiations over reallocation of water shares and management have been conducted in a direct, bilateral manner. This is the same route that would presumably be taken, at least initially, in the final status forum. Whether mediation becomes necessary would depend on the progress of these talks. If it does, it could be undertaken by the United States, from within the trilateral committee, or by a multilateral lending agency, notably the World Bank. In addition to presenting ideas, the main role of the mediator presumably would be to induce the parties to compromise through financial and technical assistance. Such intervention would not be expected to create a context that would change the relative abilities of the two sides to realize their demands; however, it could use financial and technical aid to induce an agreement as it did, for example, in the well-known case of the World Bank's facilitation in the 1950s of the deal between India and Pakistan over the Indus River basin. But because financial assistance for reconstruction is needed by the Palestinians in virtually all economic and social spheres, external funding may be less assured for water-related projects than in the case of the Indus basin. Also, the recent disappointing experiences of both Jordan and the Palestinian Authority with aid pledges versus delivery have made the Palestinians wary of promises. 101 Certainly, the Palestinians must not risk forfeiting increases in their water rights from naturally occurring water in exchange for aid promises for hypothetical, supply enhancement projects.
Arbitration (for example, through the International Court of Justice) can be resorted to only if the two sides agree to abide by the resulting verdict. Its advantage over the other two methods is that its decisions are less susceptible to the pressure of power. This is unlikely to be acceptable to Israel, but Palestinian officials invoked it as an option in past parleys, when talks over water seemed deadlocked. Its outcome would be uncertain for Israel, and it is not risk-free for the Palestinians. The magnitude of risk for the Palestinians would hinge on what they are offered in the bilateral talks. Still, it could become the only course if bilateralism or mediation fail. It has a precedent in the case of Taba, when both Egypt and Israel accepted arbitration to settle their claims to this Red Sea resort area.
To recapitulate, each side will enter the negotiations with a core demand on the agenda. The symmetry of their stream positions provides incentives for an agreement. Incentives also could come from third parties acting as mediators and providing financial and technical assistance. If direct talks and mediation fail, the negotiations method of last resort, arbitration, may be used. The Palestinians can improve their opportunities by going to the talks with fully prepared, in-depth studies, plans, and a strategy. They also badly need a dialogue with Syria which is key to obtaining a water share in the Jordan basin.
According to the interim agreements, the final status talks on water between the Israelis and Palestinians are required to settle two key water questions: the equitable allocation of water rights in the resources common to both sides and the joint management of these resources. The water resources to be accounted for in the calculus of equitable utilization are those within Mandate Palestine, including a portion of the water of the Jordan River basin allotted to the West Bank and Israel under the 1955 American-sponsored Johnston plan. In step with its territorial expansion, Israel extended its control over these resources and, acting as if it was an absolute sovereign, exploited them.
As a result of Israeli control, the present allocations of water are highly unequal in Israel's favor, even after the "Additional Water" mentioned in the Taba agreement is given to the Palestinians. One consequence of the unequal allocations is that the Palestinian water supply has remained substandard. It is also intermittent, and many households do not receive running water. Another consequence is a stark water gap between the two sides in all sectors: household, crop irrigation, and industry.
Various doctrines of international law have been invoked for water rights allocations, but only the doctrine of equitable utilization enjoys wide acceptance and is part of general international water law. In the Israeli-Palestinian context, these factors boil down to the long-term social and economic needs of both sides as well as their relative capabilities to harness alternative resources. Israel is capable of harnessing nonconventional resources that could provide it with substantial amounts of water. In fact, it announced in 1995 a long-term water desalination program that will produce about one-and-a-half times the amount of water of the entire mountain aquifer by the year 2040. In contrast, the Palestinians are short on alternative sources and the means to harness them. Thus, equitable utilization would be based on the division of the water resources in Mandate Palestine on the basis of the long-term social and economic needs and the relative capabilities of both sides to develop alternative resources. It would entitle the Palestinians to multiples of the amount of water they now obtain. More specifically, it would accord them the equivalent of the water of the mountain aquifer, the coastal aquifer under Gaza, and their quota from the Jordan basin under the Johnston plan. This still would leave Israel ahead in terms of water per capita.
The Palestinians are not likely to secure their share of the Jordan basin without the approval of Syria, the most important upstreamer of the basin. The pace and outcome of the Israel-Syria talks are therefore critical for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and the sooner the Palestinians begin a dialogue with Syria, the better.
Some form of joint water management would be required, not in the least for the verification of quantities withdrawn. International water law stipulates that joint management ought to be built on mutuality, equality, and respect for sovereignty. The present management in the West Bank is essentially a unilateral Israeli enterprise. Under the Taba agreement, only the water resources in the areas under Palestinian jurisdiction are jointly managed. This political arrangement would have to give way to a joint regime that covers the common resources on both sides of the border.
A joint management regime requires a definition of the tasks to be undertaken and the structure and composition of a joint management body. The latter would be too speculative without an agreement on the tasks. The joint tasks can range from minimal to all-encompassing, but the greater their number and the wider their scope, the higher the attendant level of cooperation between the two parties. In turn, the desired level of cooperation in the water sphere would have to be appraised in the context of how close the two sides want their overall relationship to be. Therefore, the Palestinian leadership must prepare guidelines to its water team within this broader context.
Discussions of a joint management regime also should factor in other water-related political and economic considerations, notably sovereignty and cost sharing. Palestinian sovereignty in particular could be profoundly infringed upon because of the extensive area that overlies the aquifers in the West Bank. Infringement can be avoided or minimized, for example, by substituting technical means for the presence of Israeli personnel and restraining the powers of the joint management body, particularly regarding water quality protection measures that would necessarily touch upon virtually every activity in the aquifer area, from waste water disposal to designing a landfill. Mutuality of arrangements also would go a long way toward attenuating sensitivities about sovereignty. Finally, a joint management agreement would have to resolve the economic question of how both sides would share the costs of water protection.
In the Jordan basin, a multilateral unified management regime eventually will have to be established among its five riparians. If in the meantime, and depending on the Israel-Syria talks, trilateral arrangements among Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians are to be made, the provisions of the 1994 Jordan-Israel water agreement may be adapted to the new situation.
In addition to water rights allocation and joint management, the following issues must be addressed directly or indirectly in the final status negotiations: water for Gaza, the land-water nexus, and water-related financial compensation for the Palestinians. The Palestinians must assess their optimal options for water supply to Gaza (desalination, supply from the West Bank, supply from Israel, or a combination of these), the financial compensation to be demanded, and the water consequences of land alienation by Israel (although water is not the principal reason for the Palestinians not to accede to land alienation). A final issue is the settlements' water supply. The questions that arise regarding this matter are tied to the future of the settlements, but it would be useful for the Palestinians to assess what parts of the settlements' supply infrastructure they might want to purchase should Israel decide not to dismantle it.
Both sides have incentives to reach an agreement. The symmetry of their stream positions (Israel upstream of the Jordan River and the West Bank upstream of the common aquifers) is one. Ensuring the Palestinians a fair share of the aquifers would give them the incentives to care for them--which is also a central Israeli demand. Incentives could come too from third parties acting as mediators and providing financial and technical assistance for augmenting the water supply; the Israeli-Palestinian-American Joint Committee could become a medium for such mediation. If direct talks and mediation fail, there is the negotiations method of last resort, arbitration.
For the Palestinians, an equitable resolution is necessary; for Israel, it is affordable. For the Palestinians, it would reverse a historical process of dispossession, and for Israel it would present an opportunity to deploy its superior economic and technological capabilities for resolving the water conflict and bolstering a peace it has for so long asserted it sought. It is difficult to tell how much the Israelis would be willing to move away from insisting on the primacy of prior use and toward an equitable resolution, but past Likud positions are less than reassuring. The Palestinians obviously face an uphill battle. The least that they can do to improve their opportunities is to prepare themselves diplomatically and to form a diversified negotiations team that can formulate a vision, a strategy, and options. Time is of the essence.
Appendix 1: Estimating the Palestinian Quota under the Johnston Plan
Although the Palestinians have grounded their claims in the basin on the Johnston plan, the size of the claim remains unclear. A 1992 PLO report put the West Bank's share at 290 mcm/y (220 from the Jordan and 70 from the Yarmuk).* Another report by a group of Palestinian water specialists, some of whom are or were members of the official negotiating water team, put it at 100 mcm/y, adding, without further elaboration, that "a rational allocation" would accord the Palestinians "at least 200" mcm/y.** Neither of the two reports state how they arrived at their figures, however.
| Total | West Bank | East Bank | WB/total % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Irrigable area | 519/846 | 155,762 | 364,084 | 0.30 |
| Source: American Friends of the Middle East, The Jordan Water Problem (Washington, DC: American Friends of the Middle East, 1964), p. 79. | ||||
West Bank's water quota
= 0.30 x total Jordan's quota
= 0.30 x 720
= 215 mcm/y
It is proposed here that the West Bank's share ought to be calculated as a percentage of Jordan's and in proportion to the irrigable area on the eastern and western banks of the Jordan Valley as estimated in 1955 by the Chicago-based engineering firm Baker-Harza. The rationale behind this is that Jordan's share was allocated according to the water required for that irrigable area on both sides of the river.
Calculated in this manner, the West Bank's share would be about 215 mcm/y: 180 mcm/y from the river itself and 35 mcm/y from the side wadis, as detailed above.
*P.L.O, 1992, "Water."
**Task Force of the Water Resources Action Program, "Palestinian Water Resources: A Rapid Interdisciplinary Sector Review and Issues Paper" (East Jerusalem: WRAP, 1994) p. 7.
Appendix 2: Transboundary Water Trade and Conveyance
Transboundary water trade is not common in the world today. The idea, however, has been proposed in the Jordan basin context to increase the economic efficiency of water use. A recent Harvard University Kennedy School of Government study is worth noting because it was a joint project by American, Israeli, and Arab (including Palestinian) specialists, although the Arab participants did not necessarily endorse the findings.*** One main conclusion, although not original to the study,**** is that the value of the disputed water in monetary terms is small, a feature that ought to be conducive to the resolution of the conflict. However, the study is silent on how water rights might be equitably allocated. Instead, it examines the modalities of transboundary water transfer or trade among Jordan basin riparians that would result in the efficient use of water resources. Its findings indicate that the efficient use of water would entail greater water allocations for the Palestinians than they have received so far.
Several comments about the study's findings and about the relationship between water transfer and water rights are in order:
- If the value of disputed water is small, then why bother with elaborate international arrangements for the sake of efficiency gains that would be even smaller than those of the disputed value of water?
- If the estimates are accurate, the low value of the contested water should be more valid for Israel than for the Palestinians. A dollar is worth much more to the Palestinians than to the Israelis owing to the wide income gap between the two sides. Also, Israel has the financial and techno-logical capability to harness alternative resources; for the West Bank, desalination (for example) is a theoretical option.
- Allocation through the market alone (the Harvard study does not necessarily endorse this) instead of property rights allocations is likely to be disadvantageous to the Palestinians because they are less able to pay for water than the Israelis. Thus, the market is not conducive here to equitable allocation. And, in fact, the study considers only efficiency, not equity.
- Water trade may be entered into only on the basis of free will, and allocation of water rights should be negotiated independently of a water trading agreement. Water trade is a management, not a water-rights, question.
- If the two sides agree to water trading, it should be implemented with the proviso that the water thus used would not affect the standing of the initially allocated water rights or constitute a basis for future prior-use claims.
- Each side should be free to extract its water rights allocations from its side of the border. This is important because the study suggests that it would be cheaper for the Palestinians to have their water conveyed from Israel's side, especially in the case of the western basin of the mountain aquifer. Even if further studies confirm this, the economic benefits must still be judged against the costs of vulnerability of such conveyance for the Palestinians.
***Frank Fisher et al, "The Harvard Middle East Water Project: Overview, Results and Conclusions," Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Institute for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East (report, December 1994) (photocopy).
****The idea was first broached in a study by the Israeli JAFEE Center Strategic Studies, The West Bank and Gaza: Israel's Options for Peace (West Jerusalem: Tel Aviv University, 1989) (Report of the JCCC Study Group) p. 219-20.
Note 1: Text available in "Mideast Accord: The Document," New York Times, 1 September 1993, p. A8 (among other sources). Back.
Note 2: Text of the main parts of the agreements is available in the Journal of Palestine Studies 23, no. 4 (Summer 1994): 103-118. Back.
Note 3: The text of this very long agreement is available in the computer database of the Institute for Palestine Studies, Washington, DC. Back.
Note 4: I have not seen an explicit definition of Palestinian Golan by the Palestinian side. Back.
Note 5: Palestine formally was placed under British Mandate by the League of Nations in 1922; however, Britain was effectively the Mandatory power before that date, following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire as a result of World War I. Britain was also the Mandatory power in Transjordan (today's Jordan); France was the Mandatory power in Lebanon and Syria. Back.
Note 6: Those were the boundaries that resulted from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and 1949 Armistice agreement. See Ze'ev Schiff, Peace with Security: Israel's Minimal Security Requirements in Negotiations with Syria (Washington, DC: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1993) Policy Paper 34; and Donald Neff, "Israel-Syria: Conflict at the Jordan River, 1949-1967," Journal of Palestine Studies 23, no. 4 (Summer 1994): 26-40. Back.
Note 7: See, for example, American Friends of the Middle East, The Jordan Water Problem (Washington, DC: American Friends of the Middle East, 1964), pp. 2-3; and M.G. Ionides, "The Perspective of Water Development in Palestine and Transjordan," Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 33, part 3-4 (1946): 271-80. Back.
Note 8: Tahal Consulting Engineers Ltd., "Israel Water Sector Review: Past Achievements, Current Problems and Future Options" (a report to the World Bank), Tel Aviv and Washington, DC (1990), p. 2.8. See also table 1 in this monograph; the table is based on another report to the World Bank produced by Ben-Gurion University in cooperation with Tahal and cited in the table. Back.
Note 9: The total area of the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel is not equal to the area of Mandate Palestine, because Israel's area is the result of the boundaries of the 1949 Armistice agreement between it and the Arab states, which do not exactly match those of Mandate Palestine. Back.
Note 10: The Draft Articles of the forty-sixth session of the United Nations' International Law Commission (ILC) define an international water resource as a "watercourse, parts of which are situated in different states." ILC, "The Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourse," Environmental Policy and Law 24, no. 6 (1994): 335-68. Back.
Note 11: Basic and detailed descriptions of the groundwater resources are available in numerous sources. See, among others, Yohanan Boneh and Uri Baida, "Water Sources in Judea and Samaria and Their Exploitation," in Yehuda Veshomron, ed. Absalom Shmueli et al. (West Jerusalem: Kenaan) (in Hebrew; English summary by AMER); BUNT, "Israel Water Study," 1994, cited in table 1; Rofe and Raffety Consulting Engineers, West Bank Hydrology, 1963-1965 (Westminster: London) (for the Central Water Authority, Jordan, December 1994); Joshua Schwarz, "Water Resources in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip," in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, ed. J.D. Elazar (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1982). Back.
Note 12: Arie Issar et al., "On the Ancient Water of the Upper Nubian Sandstone Aquifer in Central Sinai and Southern Israel," Journal of Hydrology 17 (1972): 353-74; Arie Issar and Ronit Nativ, "Water Beneath Deserts: Keys to the Past, a Resource for the Present," Episodes 11, no. 4 (1988): 256-62. Back.
Note 13: Joshua Schwarz (a Tahal manager) letter to author, 23 February 1993. Back.
Note 14: See, among others, Encyclopedia Judaica (West Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, Ltd., 1971) vols. 8, 9, 10, and 11; Charles T. Main, Inc., "The Unified Development of the Water Resources of the Jordan Valley Region" (Boston: Charles T. Main, Inc., 1953); Efraim Orni and Elisha Efrat, Geography of Israel, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publications Society of America, 1973), pp. 80-105; C.G. Smith, "The Disputed Waters of the Jordan," Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, no. 40 (1966): 111-28. Back.
Note 15: Neff, "Israel-Syria," p. 30. More generally, the Arab riparians objected to this and other unilateral changes by Israel on the grounds that it is an international basin and alterations of its natural configurations or properties should be done by agreement and consultation with the other riparians. Samir Saliba, The Jordan River Dispute (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1968), pp. 26-27. Back.
Note 16: Students of the Jordan basins usually assume that the Dan River is an Israeli water course and thus greatly overestimate Israel's contribution to the flow, which happens to be sensitive to its contribution to the Dan River's discharge of 250 mcm/y. But whereas the Dan emerges first in Israel, its replenishment comes principally from Mount Hermon in Lebanon and Syria and is thus a common international river. See, for example, Arnon Soffer, "The Relevance of the Johnston Plan to the Reality of 1993 and Beyond," in Water and Peace in the Middle East, eds. J. Isaac and H. Shuval (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1994), pp. 107-22 (studies in environmental science 58, proceedings of the First Israeli-Palestinian International Academic Conference on Water, Zurich, Switzerland, 10-13 December 1992). Back.
Note 17: Adam Garfinkle, War, Water and Negotiation in the Middle East: The Case of the Palestine-Syria Border, 1916-1923 Occasional Papers 115 (Tel Aviv University: The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, 1994); H.F.Frischwasser-Ra'anan, The Frontiers of a Nation (London: The Batchworth Press, 1995). Back.
Note 18: This is the territory into which Britain allowed Jewish immigration and within which its foreign minister, Lord Balfour, in 1917 promised the Jews a "homeland." Back.
Note 19: See, for example, Garfinkle, War, Water; and Patricia Toye, ed., Palestine Boundaries (vol. 3) (London: Archive Editions, 1989) (published in association with the International Boundaries Research Unit, University of Durham). Back.
Note 20: Toye, Palestine Boundaries (vol. 3), p. 232. Back.
Note 21: Ionides, "The Perspective of Water Development," p. 277. Back.
Note 22: Most of the account of the Jordan River dispute after 1948 is taken from American Friends of the Middle East, The Jordan Water Problem; Miriam L. Lowi, Water and Power: The Politics of a Scarce Resource in the Jordan River Basin (London: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Thomas Naff and R.C. Matson, Water in the Middle East: Conflict or Cooperation (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984); Saliba, The Jordan River Dispute; Georgiana Stevens, Jordan River Partition (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press and the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, 1965). Back.
Note 23: Government of Palestine, Survey of Palestine, vol. 1, 1946, pp. 314, 325-26, 339, and 410 (reprinted by the Institute for Palestine Studies, Washington, DC, 1991). Back.
Note 24: For recent examples, see Eyal Benvenisti and Haim Gvirtzman, "Harnessing International Law to Determine Israeli-Palestinian Water Rights: The Mountain Aquifer," Natural Resources Journal 33 (Summer 1993): 543-66; Daniel Hillel, Rivers of Eden: The Struggle for Water and the Quest for Peace in the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 143-76. Back.
Note 25: See, for example, Ghazi Falah, "Arabs versus Jews in Galilee: Competition for Regional Resources," GeoJournal 21, no. 4 (1990): 325-36; Ian Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel's Control of a National Minority (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), pp. 163-71. Back.
Note 26: For a summation of Israeli water policy in the West Bank and Gaza, see United Nations, Water Resources of the Occupied Territory (New York: United Nations, 1992) (prepared for, and under the guidance of, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, A/AC.I83). Back.
Note 27: It is hard to be precise here because of overpumping. Back.
Note 28: This is according to the Taba agreement. The figure for Israel is smaller than the historical record. Back.
Note 29: Schwarz, letter to the author. Back.
Note 30: Of the 400 mcm/y, 375 mcm/y were a residual and 25 mcm/y from the Yarmuk River were a priority. Back.
Note 31: For analyses of the agreement, see Sharif S. Elmusa, "The Jordan-Israel Water Agreement: A Model or an Exception?" Journal of Palestine Studies 24, no. 3 (Spring 1995): 63-73; and Fredric C. Hof, "The Yarmouk and Jordan Rivers in the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty," Middle East Policy No. 4 (Spring 1995): 1-9. Back.
Note 32: The Canal transports water, mainly for irrigation, through the east Jordan valley down south to the vicinity of the Dead Sea and small dams and other diversionary works on the lower Jordan River's side streams, 130 mcm/y. Back.
Note 33: That is, of the share of what was the East Bank of Jordan at the time of the plan. Back.
Note 34: The foregoing account is based on Elmusa, "The Jordan-Israel Water Agreement" and Fredric C. Hof, "The Yarmouk and Jordan Rivers." Back.
Note 35: The size of the West Bank and Gaza population has been controversial; the topic is beyond the scope of the present monograph. Here the World Bank's estimate is used; see World Bank, Developing the Occupied Territories: An Investment in Peace, vol. 6 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1993), p. 7. Back.
Note 36: This would be greater if processed foods were taken into account. Back.
Note 37: For 1992, the bills were $100 for the Palestinians and $25 for the Israelis, according to Mahmud El-Ja`afari, "Foreign Commodity Trade," table 9. Back.
Note 38: Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract (West Jerusalem: State of Israel, various years). Back.
Note 39: Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract, 1994. Back.
Note 40: That is because of great variation in the income elasticity of demand for water; see United Nations, Efficiency and Distributional Equity in the Use and Treatment of Water: Guidelines for Pricing and Regulations (New York: United Nations, 1980) Natural Resources/Water Series no. 8, sales no. E.80.II.A.11. Back.
Note 41: World Bank, Developing the Occupied Territories, vol. 5, p. 52. Back.
Note 42: El-Ja`afari, "Foreign Commodity Trade," table 9. Back.
Note 43: In Amman, Jordan, where personal income is comparable to that in the West Bank, the price of household water is one-third that of the West Bank. Back.
Note 44: World Bank, Developing the Occupied Territories, vol. 5, p. 52. Back.
Note 45: This is based on a comparison with Jordan, which had the same level of water use as the West Bank in 1967 but twice as much today despite a lower per capita income and water rationing. Back.
Note 46: This is a restatement of a definition of water rights in Bonnie Colby Saliba and David B. Bush, Water Markets in Theory and Practice, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987) (Studies in Water Policy and Management Series, no. 12) p. 1. Back.
Note 47: The literature on international water law is extensive. See, for example, J. Barberis, "The Development of International Law of Transboundary Groundwater," Natural Resources Journal 31, no. 1 (1991): 163-86; Dante Caponera, "The Legal-Institutional Issues Involved in the Solution of Water Conflicts in the Middle East: The Jordan," in Water and Peace, eds. J. Isaac and Hillel Shuval, pp. 163-80; Joseph W. Dellapenna, "Designing the Legal Structures of Water Management Needed to Fulfill the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles," The Palestine Yearbook of International Law (Nicosia, Cyprus: Al-Shaybani Society of International Law, 1995), pp. 63-103; Jerome Lipper, "Equitable Utilization," in The Law of InternationalDrainage Basins, eds. A.H. Garretson et al. (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications, Inc., 1967) (published for the Institute of International Law, New York University School of Law); Awn Khassawneh, "The International Law Commission and Middle East Waters," in Water in the Middle East: Legal, Political and Commercial Implications, eds. J.A. Allan and Chibli Mallat (New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 1995), pp. 21-28. Back.
Note 48: The literature generally uses the term territorial instead of hydrologic. Territorial is not imprecise, but it is indirect; hydrologic is more immediately indicative of the intent of the doctrine. Back.
Note 49: Syria shares the river with Turkey, the upstreamer, and Iraq, which is downstream from Syria. Back.
Note 50: See Department of State Administrative History (DSAH), vol. 1, chapter 4.H.2 (Johnson Administration), case no. NLJ 83-223, LBJ Library; Robert Cutler, special assistant to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 28 March 1958, "Memorandum for the President," Dwight Eisenhower Papers, case no. 80-331, document no. 1; and Lowi, Water and Power. Back.
Note 51: In a press conference on 11 January 1965, for example, Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol noted that "there are commitments in the world toward us in the wake of the Johnston plan." On 17 May, he reportedly remarked that the plan was "regarded as agreed from an international point of view." Cited in DSAH, Case no. NLJ 83-223. Back.
Note 52: The quote is from Joseph Dellapenna, "Water in the Jordan Valley: The Potential and Limits of Law," The Palestine Yearbook (1990), pp. 27 and 43. See also Dellapenna, "Designating the Legal," and Naff and Matson, Water in the Middle East, p. 169. Back.
Note 53: Bashir K. Nijim, "Water Resources in the History of the Palestine-Israel Conflict," GeoJournal 21, no. 4 (1990): 317-24. Back.
Note 54: Based on discussions with an authoritative Jordanian source. See also Leslie C. Schmida, "Israel's Drive for Water," The Link 17, no. 4 (November 1984): 11. Back.
Note 55: Nijim, "Water Resources," pp. 317-24. Back.
Note 56: American Friends of the Middle East, The Jordan Water Problem, p. 46; Lowi, Water and Power, p. 98; and Saliba, The Jordan River Dispute, p. 103. Back.
Note 57: Saliba, The Jordan River Dispute, p. 106. Back.
Note 59: See, for example, Richard Armitage, "Has the Time Come for a New Johnston Plan?" al-Hayat, 12 May 1996, p. 17 (in Arabic); Soffer, "The Relevance of the Johnston Plan," pp. 113-16. Back.
Note 60: For example, a position paper submitted in August 1992 by the Israeli delegation to the Multilateral Working Group on Water, "Proposed Activities in Desalination," stated that enhancement of water supply was "preferable" to "optimizing the distribution and usage of already existing water." Back.
Note 61: Benvenisti and Gvirtzman, "Harnessing International Law;" Elisha Kally, "Options for Solving the Palestinian Water Problem in the Context of Regional Peace," Israeli-Palestinian Peace Research Project, working paper series 19 (West Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace, 1991-92); Soffer, "The Relevance of the Johnston Plan." Back.
Note 62: Caponera, "The Legal-Institutional Issues," p. 174. Back.
Note 63: More on this in Sharif S. Elmusa, "Dividing Common Water Resources According to International Water Law: The Case of the Israeli-Palestinian Waters," Natural Resources Journal 35, no. 2 (1995): 234-52. Back.
Note 64: Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), "Water" (Tunis, 1992) photocopy (in Arabic), p. 76. Back.
Note 65: Benvenisti and Gvirtzman, two Israeli water experts, have argued in "Harnessing International Law" that in addition to these two attributes, the natural attributes should also include the storage volume stored within the aquifer on each side of the border, a consideration that increases Israel's claims based on the natural attributes of the resources. This may be valid for nonrenewable aquifers but not for the renewable ones. One way of identifying the relevant natural attributes is suggested by the intention of the doctrine of limited sovereignty. That doctrine was meant to protect the downstreamer because the natural attributes of water sources commonly enable the upstreamer, if it were to exercise absolute sovereignty, to use most of the water before it reaches downstream. Along the Nile, for example, Egypt can tap more water than can Ethiopia because the river gathers other sources from Sudan and elsewhere before reaching Egypt. Yet distribution and usage of already existing water." before it reaches Egypt. The critical attribute then is how much Ethiopia can take away, not how much water reaches Egypt. In fact, the Helsinki Rules cite only the replenishment area and volume, and the International Law Commission's third report mentions only the replenishment area. Back.
Note 66: Barberis, "The Development of International Law," pp. 177-78; Hisham Zarour and Jad Isaac, "A Novel Approach to the Allocation of International Water Resources," in Water and Peace, pp. 389-98. Back.
Note 67: Caponera, "The Legal-Institutional Issues," p. 175. See also Lipper, "Equitable Utilization," pp. 20-22. Back.
Note 68: For Israeli and Palestinian views of the doctrine of equitable utilization, see Benvenisti and Gvirtzman, "Harnessing International Law;" Elmusa, "Dividing Common Water Resources,"; James Moore, "An Israeli-Palestinian Water-Sharing Regime," Water and Peace, pp. 181-92. Back.
Note 69: These authors are prominent members of the group that drafted the Bellagio Draft Treaty, which is discussed below. Robert Hayton and Albert Utton, "Transboundary Groundwaters: The Bellagio Draft Treaty," Natural Resources Journal 29, no. 3 (1989): 669. Back.
Note 70: Barberis, "The Development of International Law," p. 175. Back.
Note 71: See, for example, ILC, "The Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourse," p. 342; Courtney G. Flint, "Recent Developments of the International Law Commission Regarding International Watercourses and the Implications for the Nile River," Water International 20, no. 4 (1995): 197-204; David Goldberg, "Projects on International Waterways: Legal Aspects of the Bank's Policy," in Country Experiences with Water Resources Management: Economic, Institutional, Technological and Environmental Issues, eds. Guy Le Moigne et al. (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1992); Hayton and Utton, "Transboundary Groundwaters." Back.
Note 72: Flint, "Recent Developments," pp. 197-204. Back.
Note 73: In my opinion, appreciable harm is a redundant factor once the social and economic needs are considered. The party that already uses the water may suffer harm from a decline in its use, but the party that is not allowed to use it to meet its social and economic needs may suffer harm as an "opportunity cost." At any rate, the Palestinians have already suffered appreciable harm by denial of use, and Israel would not as a result of lowering its water withdrawals. See Elmusa, "Dividing the Common Water Resources." Back.
Note 74: Foreign Broadcasting Information Service (FBIS), 4 April 1995. Back.
Note 75: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev with Tahal Consulting, Ltd., "Israel Water Study," p. 7.17. The projections consider annual urban and industrial demand of 110 cubic meters per capita and irrigation water for horticultural crops for domestic consumption (and even for export) and for 25 percent of the fodder for milk production. Back.
Note 76: Article 26.1, cited in Dellapenna, "Designing the Legal Structures," p. 95. Back.
Note 77: Article 26.2.a and b, cited in Ibid, p. 95. Back.
Note 78: Article 8, cited in Ibid, p. 95. Back.
Note 79: The final report of a joint Israeli and Palestinian workshop on the management of shared aquifers summarizes a variety of structures and functions but does not address the economic or political implications of the tasks. Eran Feitelson and Marwan Haddad, "Joint Management of Shared Aquifers: Final Report," (East and West Jerusalem: The Palestine Consultancy Group and the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at Hebrew University, 1995) (a cooperative research project). Back.
Note 80: Feitelson and Haddad, "Joint Management of Shared Aquifers: The First Workshop." Back.
Note 81: Hayton and Utton, "Transboundary Groundwaters." Back.
Note 82: Gail Bingham et al., "Resolving Water Disputes: Conflict and Cooperation in the United States, the Near East, and Asia" (report prepared for the Bureau for Asia and the Near East of the USAID by the Irrigation Support Project for Asia and the Near East, November 1994), p. 142. Back.
Note 83: The discussion of policy measures borrows liberally from a succinct review of groundwater protection measures in the United States authored by the National Policy Forum that, although it does not address transboundary problems, contains a rich variety of illustrations. Conservation Foundation, Groundwater Protection: The Final Report of the National Groundwater Policy Forum (Washington, DC: Conservation Foundation, 1987). Back.
Note 84: This is the procedure recommended by the Bellagio Draft Treaty and by the Draft Articles of the ILC's forty-sixth session (ILC, "The Law of Non-Navigational Uses," Article 33 (1994): 359; it is also the common procedure for resolving disputes among states. Back.
Note 85: Michael Renner, National Security: The Economic and Environmental Dimensions Worldwatch Paper 89 (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute, 1989), p. 42. Back.
Note 86: Elmusa, "The Israel-Jordan Water," p. 72. Back.
Note 87: The first measure would be effective after three years of signing the agreement and the second after four years. Back.
Note 88: For a detailed treatment of this topic, see Sharif S. Elmusa, "The Land-Water Nexus," Journal of Palestine Studies 25, no. 3 (Spring 1996): 69-78. Back.
Note 89: See, for example, "Memorandum Respecting Water Conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory," to Committee for the Study of Water Conditions, Multilateral Working Group on Water, 1992. Back.
Note 90: This is one of five groups in which forty countries participate, including European Union member states, Russia, and the United States, in addition to Middle Eastern countries. Back.
Note 91: Summary statements of various MWGW sessions. These statements are made by the gavel-holder and are not considered binding. Back.
Note 92: For example, in the Muscat, Oman, session, $10.5 million were pledged to the Palestinians for work on databank, irrigation projects, and a dam on wadi Gaza to help recharge the aquifer. Israel received $7 millions worth of pledges. FBIS, 28 June 1994. Back.
Note 93: Camille Mansour, The Palestinian-Israeli Peace Negotiations: An Overview and Assessment (October 1991-January 1993) (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1993). Back.
Note 94: The amount from the Israeli network would be 14.5 mcm/y, of which 10 mcm/y would be for Gaza. Of the total 70-80 mcm/y, 41.4-51.4 mcm/y would be from the eastern groundwater basin and other agreed sources to be developed by the Palestinians (Article 40, Additional Water section, items a and b). Back.
Note 95:
For example, projections by Hisham Awartani, the lowest among Palestinian expert projections, put the water demand in the West Bank and Gaza at 330 mcm/y by 1998, which is still 40 mcm/y greater than the potential total supply, including the extra water. Hisham Awartani, "A Projection of the Demand for Water in the West Bank and Gaza Strip" (al-Najah National University, Department of Economics, Nablus, 1991, photocopy).
According to another set of projections, however, even the "low-demand" scenario in the year 2000 would be 480 mcm/y. Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem, "Water Supply and Demand in Palestine: 1990 Baseline Estimates and Projections for 2000, 2010, and 2020" (in cooperation with the Harvard Institute for International Development, Harvard University, 1994, photocopy). Back.
Note 96: Marwan Haddad and Samir Abu Ghusha, "Consumption of Water in the West Bank: Past, Present and Future" (al-Najah National University, Department of Civil Engineering, Nablus, 1992, photocopy) (in Arabic). Back.
Note 97: In Gaza, and according to the Cairo and Taba agreements, the Palestinian Authority has taken over the management of water in the areas under its jurisdiction. (Israel was never terribly interested in managing Gaza's water.) Back.
Note 98: See Elmusa, "The Land-Water Nexus," for rightwing stance on water. Back.
Note 99: Ibrahim Hamidi, "Damascus Awaits Making the Hypothetical Consent to a Public Commitment...," citing the Syrian information minister, al-Hayat, 1 February 1996 (in Arabic). Back.
Note 100: See "Palestinian Authority and Government of Israel, Joint Statement, Taba, Egypt, 11 August 1995," in Journal of Palestine Studies 25, no. 1 (1995): 147. Back.
Note 101: For instance, the Palestinians were promised in 1994 over $700 million and have received around $220-240 millions. Jordan has found itself having to lobby hard to have its debts of about $500 million to the United States forgiven, even though it was promised so if it signed a peace treaty with Israel. Back.
